


The Touch of Six

by velourianspirit



Category: Misfits (TV 2009)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Assault, Assorted Powers, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Charlie's Mum is Mildly Shit, Charlie's Stepdad is a Very Good Father Figure, Charlie's Uncle is a Very Good Uncle, Depression, Drug Dealing, Drugs, Emotional Roller Coaster, Eventual Nathan/OC, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Family Issues, Flashbacks, Fluff, Forcefield (Power), Friends to Lovers, Headaches & Migraines, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Invisibility, Just being honest, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Name-Calling, Nathan Young Being Nathan Young, Nathan Young Needs A Hug, Physical Abuse, Rating May Change, Sexual Attraction (Power), Step-siblings, Superpowers, Swearing, Tags May Change, Telepathy, Warnings May Change, Women Being Awesome, callum is a cunt, charlie has a fear of blood, charlie is not a very good adult but she tries her best, charlie is pretty skeptical, charlie is very defensive and pushes herself away from everyone, let's be honest they WILL change, only briefly though, stereotyping, thinks she's a Bad Things Magnet, time reversal, yes charlie is bisexual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26958067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velourianspirit/pseuds/velourianspirit
Summary: In a different world, Charlie wouldn’t be wearing an orange jumpsuit that was incredibly loose, mildly torn and absolutely covered with an astonishing amount of stains. Then again, things don’t always work out like they’re expected to.
Relationships: Alisha Daniels/Curtis Donovan, Kelly Bailey/Seth, Nathan Young/Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Characters(s), Simon Bellamy/Alisha Daniels
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	1. Rotted in Your Brain

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my Misfits fanfiction! As you'll know if you read the tags (which you hopefully did), this is the Misfits world we all know and love, except it's brought forward to the modern day. No shitty flip phones to be seen here, folks! As you would've also seen in the tags, the tags will certainly change as I write each chapter. I'll be putting trigger warnings in the notes of each chapter because of this. With that being said, I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: threats of violence (minimal)

A community service order was one thing. Doing it on a miserable council estate just outside of London was another thing, but the worst thing was easily the orange jumpsuit that Charlie Montgomery was being forced to wear as a part of her community service order.

In a different world, Charlie wouldn’t be wearing an orange jumpsuit that was incredibly loose, mildly torn and absolutely covered with an astonishing amount of stains. In fact, in a different world, she wouldn’t even be in Wertham.

Then again, things don’t always work out like they’re expected to.

“This is it. This is your chance to do something positive. Give something back,” proclaimed Charlie’s probation worker. He looked like your standard probation worker. He was maybe in his forties, if Charlie’s guesses were right. A lousy lanyard was hanging from his neck, displaying a frankly miserable photo of the man who was delivering a supposedly motivating speech to the group of young offenders. Charlie couldn’t give less of a shit -- she didn’t want to know her probation worker’s name. Ideally, she would work her way out of things in a few weeks, and she wouldn’t have to be stuck in Wertham anymore. “You can help people. You can really make a difference. That’s what community service is all about. There are people out there who think you’re scum. You have an opportunity to show them they’re wrong.”

“Yeah, but what if they’re right?” 

Charlie was relatively good at understanding someone’s character as soon as she met them. The voice belonged to a lanky, curly-haired Irish lad who looked extremely cocky and smug as he made such a profound declaration. 

“I mean, no offence, but I’m thinkin’ some people are just born criminals,” explained the Irish lad, gesturing to a boy near him. The boy was pale, and had a significant amount of moles, but they weren’t at all distracting compared to the garishly large hat that was balanced on his presumably bare scalp and the evidently fake chains around his throat. He was a typical Wertham roadman -- almost certainly all bark and no bite whatsoever.

“You lookin’ to get stabbed?” snapped the boy with the foolishly oversized hat. He was like a bobblehead with his big hat, and it was incredibly humorous to witness.

“You see my point there?” continued the Irish lad. Charlie couldn’t exactly tell if he was talking to their probation worker, who already looked extremely frustrated, or the group, or a combination of both. 

Someone’s phone rang, and Charlie chuckled to herself quietly, shaking her head.  _ This is already a fucking shitshow _ , she thought to herself. 

“Hey,” said one of the other girls, responding to whoever had called her. Charlie and Alisha made unlikely friends throughout secondary school & sixth form; they were a pairing that nobody particularly expected, but they somehow clicked well. Alisha was a gorgeous girl, and could almost always be found enjoying life in a packed, sweaty nightclub, while Charlie was the complete opposite. In fact, she resented nightclubs, but was often dragged along by Alisha. Out of the few friends Charlie had throughout her time in public education, she expected Alisha to get into trouble with the police, though she had no idea why she was actually there with a clunky ASBO tag on her ankle. 

“Doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past,” continued the probation worker, glancing over at Alisha with his eyebrows furrowed.

“Doing my community service,” explained Alisha to whoever she was talking to. “Boring as fuck.”

“Hello? I’m still talking here,” said the probation worker.

“What? I thought you’d finished,” said Alisha, immediately responding in her snarky way. 

“You see my lips still moving, that means I’m still talking.”

“Yeah, but you could be yawnin’, or chewin’,” interrupted the Irish lad.

The probation worker was clearly easily agitated, because he was pretty much yelling at Alisha to end the call, while the Irish lad was looking over at the very pale boy who was next to Alisha. He was shockingly pale, and looked like he didn’t get enough sun in the slightest. He had a surprisingly flat fringe, and had buttoned his jumpsuit up to the very top, something that no-one else had actually bothered to do. He really didn’t look like he belonged in the group -- in fact, he looked like a pretty smart guy, but he also looked like a very smart guy who would probably also be pushed over the edge very, very easily. 

“I’ll rip out your throat and shit down your neck,” spat the wannabe gangster, directing his empty threat at the Irish lad. Charlie scoffed under her breath. For someone who looked like he didn’t pass many of his GCSEs, the wannabe gangster had some pretty inventive insults. 

“I shouldn’t be here, man,” complained the tall guy who was standing on Charlie’s right. She recognised him as soon as she saw him -- he was Curtis Donovan, a brilliant runner and a hopeful Olympian. Well, he’d been a hopeful Olympian until he’d washed his career down the drain by getting caught with an unspecified amount of drugs, which had been pretty major news. He looked bored and tired, which was understandable -- the situation wasn’t exactly riveting, to say the least. Even so, Charlie felt tired by his evident pessimism. “Can I move to a different group? This isn’t working for me.”

“Er, wot makes you fink you’re better than us?” asked the chavvy girl who was standing next to Charlie. She had scraped back her hair significantly, and her scalp almost looked painfully brushed back, while her ponytail was frankly a little bit ratty. She wasn’t exactly unattractive by any means, but her attitude was, and so was her accent. 

“What is that accent?” laughed the Irish lad. 

“Is that for real?” added Curtis.

“Er, are you tryin’ to say something?” 

“It’s… that’s just a noise. Are we supposed to be able to understand her?” asked the Irish lad, clearly taking the piss. 

“D’ya understand that?” spat the chav. With one flick of the wrist, she flipped off the Irish lad (and probably Curtis, too) by raising her middle finger.  _ Great, top-notch insult, that. You’ve really shut him up with that _ , thought Charlie, trying her very best not to laugh under her breath. 

“I think she likes me!” proclaimed the Irish lad, directing his words to the wannabe gangster, which was clearly the final straw for the hat-wearing idiot, who started pushing and shoving the Irish lad as if he’d said something extremely offensive and warranted being attacked.

* * *

After the probation worker had managed to break up the little physical spat between the Irish lad and the wannabe gangster, Charlie and the group were redirected to a little communal area by the local river, where they were to be tasked with doing a very demeaning task: painting benches.

Honestly, it wasn’t the painting benches part that sucked -- it was the fact that Charlie had no say in what she was doing. She wouldn’t particularly  _ mind  _ to be painting benches in a normal environment, but she was wearing a garish orange jumpsuit that conveniently had ‘COMMUNITY PAYBACK’ slapped across the back in harsh black lettering. She felt like a massive cliche; she could’ve easily started a new life by going to uni and leaving her shithead of a step-brother behind in Wertham, but it hadn’t been that easy. 

She had plonked herself with the Irish lad and the chavvy girl. While she knew Alisha on a personal level, they hadn’t talked in a while, and Charlie would’ve felt a bit awkward if she’d just plonked herself down next to her when it was pretty clear that Alisha already had her eyes set on Curtis. She didn’t want to be seen on the same planet as the wannabe gangster, and she didn’t exactly know how to feel about the silent, pale boy, so she stuck with the curly-haired Irish twat and the chavvy girl who, quite frankly, looked like she belonged on the Jeremy Kyle show.

The group’s silence was soon broken, though. “Argh, there’s paint on my cap!” yelled the wannabe gangster, standing up and yanking his oversized cap off his head. He was like a stroppy kid you couldn’t control -- there was no way that he was actually as hard as he was making himself out to be. “This is bullshit.”

Walking off in a strop, the wannabe gangster declared his frustration excellently by kicking his can of white paint into the river, which wasn’t exactly helpful -- they were now down a can of paint, and he’d just contributed to the state of the river, which was already a mess.

“So, what are you in for?” asked the Irish lad, directing his question. “I’m guessin’ shopliftin’?”

“Don’t act like you know me ‘cos you don’t,” said the chav, lazily swiping her paintbrush across the slates of the bench. 

“I’m just makin’ conversation,” drawled Irish, stopping his unmotivated painting. “This is a chance to network with other young offenders. We should be swappin’ tips. Brainstormin’.”

“A girl just called me a slag so I just got into a fight,” said the chav, unmotivated in her words. Charlie sighed quietly. Fights were probably the main reason why a lot of people got community service, really, and Charlie wasn’t all too surprised by this revelation. 

“Was this on the Jeremy Kyle Show?” voiced Irish.

“Nah, it was down Argos,” responded the chav.

“Argos? You know what you should’ve done. You should’ve got one of them little pens and jabbed it in her eye,” joked Irish.

“Yeah,” voiced Charlie, “because that would’ve  _ really  _ helped her case. You know, I thought this whole community service thing was about righting your wrongs.”

“Eh? Did you not hear me? I just said I was making conversation,” exclaimed Irish, looking wounded at Charlie’s statement. “You’re a right downer, you know. So, uh… what about you, weird kid? Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but you look like a panty sniffer.”

“I’m not a panty sniffer,” responded the quiet, pale boy. “I’m not a pervert.”

Irish started to pretend he was wanking off his paintbrush, which would’ve been funny if the quiet boy hadn’t snapped and told the group what he really did to get there in the first place: “I tried to burn someone’s house down!”

The awkward, stiff silence that fell over the group was actually quite deafening. Charlie’s mouth was hanging open from shock. How the fuck did this kid  _ only  _ have community service? Trying to burn someone’s house down was surely enough to warrant actually going to prison, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like Charlie knew all too much about the criminal justice system; it was her uncle who was the lawyer, and thus the one who knew about the general proceedings for essentially every single crime under the sun.

“What did you do?” asked the chav, directing her question at the curly-haired Irish lad who no longer looked so smug, which was nice. He needed shutting up -- though he’d done it in with an incredibly uncomfortable response, the quiet, pale kid had done so. 

“Me?” he responded. “I was done for, uh, eatin’ some pick-n-mix.”

“That’s bollocks,” retorted the chav.

“Seriously,” added Charlie. “Nobody gets community service for nabbing a few cola bottles. My little sisters have done that and they aren’t wearing orange jumpsuits. There’s got to be something you’re not telling us.” 

“Do I look like a liar? You wound me,” sighed the Irish lad. “What did you do, then? If we’re all sharin’ our crimes, you need to tell the group too.”

“Considering you’ve probably just blatantly lied about what you did, I don’t feel the need to say what happened until you tell the truth. There’s no point if you’re just gonna lie about it,” retorted Charlie, dabbing some more paint onto the bench before looking up at the sky. It was shockingly dark. A massive cloud was forming over the whole estate, it seemed, and it was the strangest cloud Charlie had ever seen. She’d seen storm clouds before, but this was frankly ridiculous. 

“What is goin’ on with this weather?” asked Irish, voicing Charlie’s thoughts. She hoped he wasn’t expecting an answer, because Charlie had  _ no  _ idea why the sky looked so depressing, and she doubted her fellow young offenders had any idea either. 

A distant crack of thunder clapped in the distance, but Charlie’s attention was diverted as the probation worker made his presence known, acknowledging the paint can that was floating in the nearby water. “How’d that happen?” he asked, gesturing to the paint that was splattered across the ground, though he seemingly didn’t acknowledge that the wannabe gangster was no longer with the group. “I mean, you’ve been here five minutes. It’s painting benches. How’d you screw that up? You tell me, because I’ve got no idea.”

Charlie opened her mouth, intending to politely inform the probation worker that it had been the idiot in the oversized cap that had kicked the paint can into the river and had stormed off like a child, but before she managed to actually say anything, she was interrupted by a massive crashing sound. The ground felt like it was shaking beneath her feet, and if it wasn’t for the unpainted arm of the bench, she probably would’ve toppled straight onto her arse. She looked around to look at the source of the ridiculously loud crashing noise, only to discover that an extremely large block of ice had crashed into some poor person’s car, destroying it instantly. It looked like ice, but Charlie wasn’t too sure -- it looked like it’d been sourced straight from a massive iceberg. 

“That’s my car!” exclaimed the probation worker, his mouth hanging open as he looked between the group of stunned young offenders and his car, which was definitely undrivable. The massive chunk of ice had completely caved the roof of his car in, and there was no way it could be repaired.

“Classic!” laughed the Irish lad. How was he  _ still  _ cracking stupid jokes? A massive chunk of ice had fallen from the sky and could’ve easily collided with them if it hadn’t slammed into the roof of the probation worker’s car instead. 

Just as Charlie’s shock had started to subside, another massive crash resonated, except this time it was behind her. What she presumed was another massive chunk of ice had collided directly with the polluted water behind her. She screamed as water splashed up into the air from the force of the collision and splattered all over her, chilling her to the bone.

“Alright, everyone, let’s get inside!” exclaimed the probation worker, ushering the group towards him.  _ This cannot be real. This cannot be happening. This isn’t possible.  _ As the massive chunks of ice fell from the sky, Charlie dodged them in whatever way she could, screaming and yelping like a wounded dog as she almost tripped over a paving stone that’d been ripped up with the force of the ongoing collison. 

_ What sort of storm is this?  _ she thought to herself, panicking as she legged it towards the community centre, thanking herself internally for the years of constant hours and hours she spent running.  _ There’s no way this is normal.  _ She screamed as a massive chunk of ice collided with the ground that was no more than a few inches to her left, her heart pounding as she realised that she very well could’ve been trapped under it if she hadn’t been lucky enough to be running in the relatively straight line she was following.

By the time they all got to the community centre’s doors, Curtis was yelling at the probation worker to open the door. It was just their luck -- they were all locked out of the community centre, which was currently the only place that could shelter them from the storm. The probation worker’s hands were shaking horrifically as he desperately ran through the set of keys. There were way too many keys in one place, and all Charlie could hear was her own heartbeat as her fellow young offenders shouted desperately at the probation worker. 

And then, Charlie could hear nothing. A painfully bright flash of whiteness slammed into the ground beneath the group’s feet, and suddenly Charlie was in the air. A guttural cry ripped from her throat as lightning traversed through her body. It felt like an agonisingly hot fire had travelled through her entire body, pushing through her brain and slipping out of her feet. 

Suddenly, she was back to a shitty reality as her back slammed directly into the wet pavement below her. A strange echo of an unexplainable feeling was still trapped inside of Charlie’s body, but she really couldn’t put her pain on it. Her head was pounding, likely from the aftermath of being struck by lightning. The melted slush on the ground had started to seep through her clothes, and her back was so cold. Everything around her was so loud.

Charlie wasn’t entirely sure how she’d managed to push herself up onto her elbows, but she did, and looked around at her fellow young offenders, who were all collapsed on the ground. No one looked to be physically injured enough for Charlie to immediately be concerned, but she knew that there was a very high possibility of something happening later on down the line as a direct result of the lightning strike.

“I feel really weird,” muttered the chav.

“That’ll be the lightnin’,” responded Curtis, groaning as he managed to push himself up onto his elbows, too.

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” muttered Charlie, blinking slowly. Every time she blinked, she wondered what would happen if she didn’t open her eyes again. Would reality hit her, and would the shock of the lightning strike send her into cardiac arrest? Under normal circumstances, a twenty-year-old going into cardiac arrest wasn’t exactly normal or healthy, but these weren’t exactly normal circumstances -- after all, she’d been hit by lightning, of all things.

“We should be dead,” added the quiet, pale boy, his piercing blue eyes staring directly at the wall opposite him. To be honest, he creeped Charlie out to a certain extent, but maybe she was judging his character too soon.

Then again, he  _ had  _ just pointed out a very pessimistic thing. Granted, said pessimistic thing was also obvious, but it wasn’t exactly helpful.

“Hey!” shouted Irish, looking at the probation worker and snapping his fingers as if the probation worker was an underpaid waiter at a restaurant, and Irish was a snobby, ungrateful customer. “Hey! A little reassurance might be nice, y’know. You’re fine! Lookin’ great.”

The probation worker honestly appeared to be having a mild fit, which was concerning; however, once his spasms subsided, he made a semi-decent attempt to push himself up onto his elbows, but it didn’t really work. “W-wanker,” he forced out. 

Charlie couldn’t help it -- even though it wasn’t the time for name-calling, and the probation worker  _ had  _ just openly insulted one of the young offenders he was supposedly responsible for, Charlie laughed to herself, wheezing slightly. She supposed it was directed to the curly-haired Irish lad, who, by all accounts, was proving to be a wanker.

“Did he just call me a wanker?” asked Irish, appearing baffled out of his mind. 

“Is everyone alright?” managed the probation worker, actually managing to push himself up onto his elbows this time. 

“We could’ve died, you dick,” snapped Alisha, looking at the probation worker as if he was the scum of the earth. To be honest, he wasn’t exactly proving to be a very good man -- calling one of the young offenders he was responsible for a wanker was extremely harsh, even if his judgement had been correct. Even if he hadn’t called Irish a wanker, he  _ had  _ snapped at Alisha for her language, and because of that, they’d all been struck by lightning. He wasn’t exactly the best person to be looking after a bunch of young offenders, it seemed.

“Are you alright?” asked the chavvy girl, looking fairly concerned, but also quite judgmental, too. “You’re actin’ like a freak.”

“Maybe we should call it a day,” said the probation worker. Charlie sighed, relieved that she didn’t have to do anything else with her day. Getting struck by lightning was not what she expected to happen on her first day of community service, but she was glad that she could just go home and crash for the rest of the day. “You lot, get yourselves home. I’ve got some paperwork that needs filling out.”

Charlie quickly stripped herself out of her shitty orange jumpsuit as soon as she got back into the locker room, realising that she probably needed to chuck it in the washing machine as soon as she got back to her flat. Fuck, it was probably best if she hopped in the shower, too. Considering that she’d been hit by lightning, there were way too many things Charlie needed to do as a semi-responsible adult. 

Wanting to get out of the community centre as soon as possible, she jumped back into her jeans and pulled her old, battered hoodie over her head, moderately grateful that she could at least be semi-comfortable in her own clothes for the rest of the day. Her pulsating headache and cramping muscles weren’t comforting in the slightest, but Charlie couldn’t do anything about that until she got back to her flat.

She quickly dashed out into the foyer of the community centre, where she saw the Irish twat, the pale kid and Curtis all hanging around one of the vending machines, apparently waiting for something. “Why are we hanging around this shithole?” she asked, leaning against one of the weird pillars.

“Waiting for the probation worker,” said the quiet kid. “I think there’s something wrong with him. It’s like he was having a spasm.”

“He was probably faking it,” drawled Irish. “Trying to get some compensation. Cheap bastard.”

“Who could he  _ possibly  _ get compensation from?” returned Charlie, furrowing her eyebrows as Irish turned to look at her. He looked mildly offended at Charlie’s sudden response, but it was probably just another part of his dickish act. “I mean, we can’t exactly sue the sky, can we? If we could, I reckon it’d be a decent payout, but I don’t think that’s how that works in the eyes of the law.”

“Yeah? And what do you know about the law? I’m sure the probation worker could probably manage to work his way around the law to get some compensation from somewhere,” retorted Irish. “Maybe not directly from the sky, but… y’know, somewhere.”

“Considering my uncle is a very good lawyer, I’m pretty sure I know more about the law than you do,” snorted Charlie.

“Your uncle’s a lawyer, is he? Well, how come you’re here, then? If your uncle’s such a good lawyer, surely you would’ve gotten away scott-free, no?” suggested Irish.

Just as Charlie opened her mouth to respond to Irish’s inherently ridiculous questions, Alisha strutted out of the locker room. “What are we waiting for?” she demanded. 

“Probation worker,” replied Curtis.

“I’m not waiting around for that dickhead,” muttered Alisha. Without any other words, she stormed off, and the rest of them followed suit, leaving Wertham’s shitty community centre behind them for the day. 

“Is your uncle really a lawyer, then?” asked Irish. Charlie stopped in her tracks and turned to face the curly-haired lad, who was smirking, hands stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie. 

“Does it actually concern you  _ that  _ much? I’m starting to think that the probation worker was right when he called you a wanker,” snapped Charlie.

“Oh, you wound me. I’m just thinkin’ -- if he is that good of a good lawyer, why are you here?”

“Are you always like this? Do you always probe strangers with annoying questions that aren’t actually any of your business?” 

“Hey, it’s a perfectly valid question!” insisted Irish.

Without saying anything else, Charlie flipped Irish off with her middle finger, and started heading to her flat, shoving her earphones into her ears in an attempt to ignore the noise pollution of the estate. She needed to relax -- whether that was with a few alcoholic drinks, a bath, one of her comfort movies or all of the above, she didn’t care. It was barely the afternoon, but Charlie was willing to waste the rest of her day doing nothing at all.


	2. Scrubbing Paint Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who left kudos on the first chapter! I was really pleased with it, and I'm pleased with this one too. Updates now may be staggered as I've just started back at uni, but I'll do my best to get a chapter out a week where possible. I've really enjoyed writing this so far, so any feedback would be great!
> 
> As always, trigger warnings are below.
> 
> Trigger warnings: references to drug dealing, references to physical abuse, strong language, violent threats

The annoying sound of Apple’s default alarm sound eventually pulled Charlie out of her sleep, even though she wished it hadn’t. She wished she didn’t have to deal with community service for the second day in a row, especially after she was struck by lightning. She was grateful that she’d managed to wash her jumpsuit and get some of the unexplainable stains out of the horrible orange material, but she wasn’t grateful that she’d have to wear it again.

She hated the sight of it. Sitting up, Charlie glanced at it. She’d left it hanging on her door after she’d chucked it in the dryer, knowing that if she left it on her bedroom door, she wouldn’t be able to forget about it. 

Getting out of bed was effort. She hadn’t showered last night, even though she definitely needed to, so Charlie reluctantly forced herself into the small shower, scrubbing away as many thoughts of the storm as she could. It would be ridiculous if she tossed her hideous jumpsuit on, so Charlie instead decided to wear one of her favourite shirts. It was a black shirt that was decorated with several different cats, except all of the cats represented a different pride flag. It was one of the first things that Charlie’s girlfriend bought for her, and she loved it dearly.

After getting dressed, Charlie noticed that her stomach was practically ordering her to the kitchen. Even though she didn’t really feel like eating, she doubted she could get through the day on an empty stomach, especially with a throbbing headache. She didn’t exactly know why her headache had persisted through the night despite taking painkillers, but she hoped it’d go away during the day. She shoved two slices of white bread in the toaster and grabbed the spread out of the fridge, only wanting to eat a minimal amount of food.

Having quickly shovelled the two slices of toast into her mouth, Charlie glanced at the time on her phone. She wasn’t expected at the community centre for another hour, but she didn’t have anything else to do. She yanked her jumpsuit off the hanger, and folded it up neatly, shoving it into the nearest plastic bag. Quickly checking her actual bag, Charlie ensured that she had everything she needed for the day. Keys, painkillers, wallet, portable charger, gum…

“Shit. I must’ve left my water bottle at the community centre,” she whispered to herself as she left her flat, knowing that she hadn’t seen it since she dragged herself out of bed. Thankfully, at the bottom of her building, there was a particularly small SPAR, where she grabbed two bottles of water and a can of full-fat Dr. Pepper, knowing that she needed the energy.

By the time she arrived at the community centre, she still wasn’t needed for another forty-five minutes, but she didn’t have anything better to do. The doors weren’t locked, surprisingly, but it probably meant that the probation worker was already there.  _ I should probably learn his name,  _ thought Charlie.  _ After all, he’ll be bossing us around for the next few months. _

Charlie wandered absent-mindedly into the locker room, where she returned her orange jumpsuit to its place hanging on the clothes hook inside of the dinky locker. She tucked her phone into her back pocket and grabbed one of her water bottles before heading out into the main room of the community centre, not particularly expecting to find anyone or anything.

She scrolled through one of her playlists, trying to find a song that was appropriate to her current situation -- being alone in a community centre. She assumed she was alone; if the probation worker was actually here, he probably would’ve stalked out of his office and asked Charlie why she was there. Instead of hearing the awkward scuffle of the probation worker’s steps, as she removed an earbud, she heard the sound of snoring.

_ Snoring?  _ she thought, her eyebrows furrowing. Charlie didn’t know why someone would actively go out of their way to sleep in a community centre, though she supposed it was probably a last resort, to say the least. She stalked silently around the main room for the source, and stopped dead in her tracks when she realised exactly who was snoring.

It was the curly-haired Irish lad, the one who insisted he got community service for nabbing some pick-n-mix. It was quite a surprising sight, really, but not a happy one -- a young adult was sleeping on a bare mattress in a community centre. Charlie sighed and checked the time on her phone. They had about thirty minutes before they were expected to show up for community service, and the curly-haired Irish lad was snoring away in the community centre.

“Wake up,” said Charlie, nudging the mattress with her shoe, hoping that it would wake him up. Nothing. In fact, his snoring got louder, which was quite funny. Charlie scoffed, and moved her foot again -- this time, she tapped his leg. “Community service starts in thirty minutes, and I’m not gonna get penalised for trying to deal with you.”

Again, nothing. Realising that she’d probably have to go to extreme methods to waking him up, Charlie tapped her foot against the laminate floor for a few seconds before kicking him forcefully in the lower leg.

Unsurprisingly, he responded with a yelp. “Oi! What the fuck?!” he shouted, sitting up immediately. “What was that for? Why’d you have to kick me?”

“We’re expected outside in thirty minutes, and I don’t want to be responsible for trying to deal with you,” snapped Charlie, running her fingers through her hair. 

“Jesus,” he groaned, rubbing his eyes. 

“You snore quite badly, mate,” sighed Charlie. “If you’re going to be staying in the community centre for a while and don’t want to be found out by the probation worker, I’d recommend trying to deal with that.”

“Shit,” Irish muttered, clearly realising where he was.

“What happened?” asked Charlie.

“Just a slight, uh… misunderstandin’ with my mum. Nothin’ too major, and nothin’ to get your knickers in a twist about. This is just a temporary thing. I’m sure I’ll be out of this shithole in no time.”

“Misunderstanding?” repeated Charlie. “She kicked you out, didn’t she?”

He stayed silent for a minute. “Like I said, it’s just a misunderstandin’. I’m sure it’ll all be sorted by the end of the day,” he insisted, even though Charlie was skeptical that he actually believed that. “Listen, can you not tell the others? I don’t want anyone else findin’ out.”

“Sure. It’s none of my business, anyway,” said Charlie. “The name’s Charlie, by the way.”

“Charlie,” hummed Irish. “Suits you. I’m guessin’ it’s short for Charlotte?”

“This is the part where you tell me your name,” said Charlie, avoiding the question. By all accounts, her name was legally Charlotte, but no-one in her good books called her that. It was a stupidly feminine name. It didn’t suit her by any means. 

“Nathan,” he said. “You didn’t answer my question. Is your name short for Charlotte?”

“Does it matter?” she asked. “Like I said, we’re expected outside in a bit. I’d get myself sorted out if I were you. Put your stuff away, and call your mum.”

“Whatever,” muttered Nathan. “I’ll do one of those things. Don’t think I have time for both.”

Charlie snorted and jogged down the stairs. It was probably a good idea to shove her phone in her locker -- if anyone’s phone went off, she imagined the probation worker would probably confiscate their phones as if they were at school. She dashed into the locker room, chucked her phone in her bag and wandered outside reluctantly. It would look weird if she arrived with Nathan.

As she walked up, she noticed that everyone was already there, excluding the gangster who’d been wearing that foolishly oversized cap the day before. Alisha was using her phone, while everyone else was just hanging around, presumably waiting for the probation worker. 

Walking up to the group, Charlie noticed that someone had rudely graffitied the side of the community centre.  _ I guess that’s what we’re doing for the day _ , thought Charlie, surprised at the dark nature of the graffiti. It wasn’t your standard graffiti -- instead, someone had spray-painted the words  **I AM GOING TO KILL YOU** on the side of the community centre. Whoever had done it decided upon using a red spray-paint, which was quite fitting considering the message itself.

“That’s quite the threat,” said Charlie as she approached the group. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen that around the estate before.”

“It’s a fookin’ pisstake,” snapped the chav. 

“I guess today’s task isn’t a surprise. That’s a bonus, I guess,” mused Charlie. “I didn’t get your names yesterday. If we’re going to be doing community service together for the next few months, knowing everyone’s names would be nice.”

Kelly was the name of the chavvy girl, while the pale, quiet kid was called Simon. Obviously, she didn’t need to know Alisha’s name, nor Curtis’, but they felt the need to introduce themselves properly to the rest of the group anyway.

As Nathan decided to join the rest of the group, he lit a cigarette. “So, do you guys think it has a hidden meaning?” he drawled, talking through the cigarette dangling from his lips. “The graffiti, I mean.”

“No,” said Charlie. “No, the meaning is pretty obvious, isn’t it? I mean, it’s literally spelled out for us. Someone wants to kill someone. There’s no hidden meaning behind it. If there is, I’d quite like to know exactly  _ what  _ the hidden meaning is.”

“Nah, nah, it’s like the monkey policeman with the banana & the Tesco bag,” insisted Nathan. “There’s a hidden meaning.”

“Maybe someone wants to kill us,” said Simon in a quiet voice, looking at least moderately scared. It was quite a reach,  _ but  _ being struck by lightning wasn’t exactly something Charlie expected would happen in her lifetime, either. 

“Er, why would anyone wanna kill us?” asked Kelly, shooting Simon’s suggestion down immediately.

As a group, Charlie reckoned that there were probably a fairly large group of people who wanted the young offenders dead. Charlie was pretty sure that two people wanted her dead, but it was probably more. Nathan was a shithead, so he was almost definitely on several people’s bad sides. Simon had explained that he’d tried to burn someone’s house down -- aside from that, he was extraordinarily quiet, so he was a bit of a hit-and-miss. Alisha was a beautiful girl, but she was very self-centred and didn’t exactly care about others. Kelly had mentioned that she was doing community service because of a fight. Curtis… well, Charlie was pretty sure that his former coach was probably wallowing in self-pity after losing such a star athlete.

The probation worker waltzed up to them in a nonchalant way, but he looked relatively irritated already, even though there was no reason for him to be in such a state. Then again, the paperwork he’d had to fill out because of the storm was probably extremely tiring. 

“Come on, you lot,” he ordered. “Let’s get changed."

“Have you seen this?” asked Curtis, gesturing to the graffiti on the side of the community centre. “Someone’s taking the piss.”

“Yeah. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” said the probation worker. “All of this anti-social behaviour.”

_ Christ. What have we actually done today to make him so irritated already?  _ thought Charlie. “Oh! Is he havin’ a dig at us?” asked Nathan, making a slight jab at the probation worker’s mood. In all fairness, Charlie had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying something stupid herself. She reckoned that Nathan didn’t care enough to read the room, or didn’t care enough about anyone in the world except himself to actually realise that his words could potentially be harmful. 

It was probably both. The probation worker sighed, and looked pretty irritated at Nathan’s comment, but he didn’t move to do anything until Alisha’s phone rang. She looked relaxed as she moved to answer it, but the probation worker quickly interrupted her from taking another phone call. “Right! That’s it. All of you, just give me your phones. No one’s making any more calls today!”

“Are you allowed to take our phones?” laughed Alisha, quickly taking a photo of the agitated probation worker before she turned her phone off & handed it over. Curtis looked mildly annoyed as he handed his phone over, while Kelly just stood there with a dirty look on her face. Simon handed over his phone without another word, but Charlie wondered what he’d actually do with himself now that he couldn’t just whip his phone out and film anything peculiar happening around him. 

“I’m expectin’ a call from my mum,” said Nathan, still holding his phone as the probation worker approached him. It didn’t stop the probation worker, though -- he quickly snatched it out of Nathan’s hand, which clearly shocked the curly-haired Irish lad. “Alright, leave a message!”

“Your phone?” asked the probation worker as he finally approached Charlie, who was currently the only young offender who hadn’t given up her phone. 

“I left it at my flat,” lied Charlie. “I forgot to pick it up. I can’t give it to you, because it’s about seven minutes away. Sorry.”

Even though it was a risky lie, somehow, she managed to get away with it. Just as they were all heading into the community centre to get changed, Nathan slapped Curtis right on the arse for no reason, which Curtis clearly didn’t like. Quickly turning around, Charlie did a quick headcount, noticing that they were missing someone -- the wannabe gangster with the stupid cap. To be honest, she couldn’t really blame him. She didn’t exactly miss his annoying presence, either. 

Charlie quickly clambered into her jumpsuit, rolling her eyes at the background noise. Alisha, Curtis and Nathan were talking about what the probation worker was possibly doing with their phones -- sex lines quickly came up, which was a vulgar suggestion, but Charlie didn’t need to worry about her phone bill. She grabbed her phone from its place in her bag and scrolled through her texts, noticing a few unread messages from her girlfriend. 

“I thought you said you didn’t have your phone?” said Alisha, looking relatively pissed off over the fact that Charlie still had her phone. 

“I technically didn’t when we were outside,” explained Charlie. “I got here early, and the doors were unlocked, so I shoved everything in my locker, including my phone. I had a feeling that he’d confiscate our phones.”

“Fuck. I wish I’d thought of that,” responded Alisha. “How come you’re here, anyway?”

“Long story,” sighed Charlie. “And it’s a shit one, too.”

“I hear you. Want a bit of this?” asked Alisha, extending her cigarette out to the group. Charlie wasn’t all too sure exactly how the fire alarms hadn’t gone off yet, but they were probably old as fuck anyway. Charlie and Curtis didn’t touch the cigarette, but Nathan almost immediately plucked it out of Alisha’s hand.

Just as Charlie thought, they were being tasked with cleaning off the graffiti with the particularly threatening message. They were supplied with metal buckets that were spilling over with lukewarm soapy water, and old brushes that looked like they’d been through the warzones. There was probably no budget at all for something like a power washer, but Charlie wasn’t surprised -- no community centre had  _ that  _ much money to its name to afford a power washer. 

Alisha plonked herself down on a bench and decided to unzip her jumpsuit, displaying her chest while everyone else was doing the hard work. It was typical Alisha behaviour, really, so she wasn’t all too surprised. Curtis was originally displeased by her laziness, but it was clear that a quick look at her tits was enough to cool him down.

Charlie dunked her brush into the bucket of soapy water and scrubbed away at the paint. Her muscles were still slightly sore from the day before, so she couldn’t put all of her strength into it without pulling something, but she was doing her best. She just wanted to clean the graffiti off as soon as she possibly could, hoping that they’d  _ maybe  _ have a slightly more thrilling task to deal with as soon as they’d stripped the wall of the horrible message.

“You know, after the storm, did any of you lot feel weird?” asked Kelly, looking around at the group. Charlie stopped scrubbing and decided to awkwardly put her brush back into her bucket of water, wondering if this conversation was actually going to go anywhere. 

“Yeah! I had a strange tingling sensation in my anus,” said Nathan, clearly taking the piss as he grabbed his own backside, raising his eyebrows cheekily as Charlie turned to look at him. 

“So, you’re saying the storm gave you piles, of all things?” asked Charlie, not believing a single second of what Nathan was saying.  _ A general rule, it seems, is to not believe anything he says.  _ “Alternatively, the lightning just exited your body there.”

“What, did you feel weird?” demanded Kelly, turning to face Simon. He appeared to be paler than ever, and he looked as if he was extremely on-edge. It was quite concerning to see. 

“What, you don’t want to hear about my anus?” whined Nathan.

“Do you really need to ask the question?” snapped Curtis, echoing Charlie’s thoughts, if not everyone’s. It was a fucking bizarre question, in all fairness, but Nathan was a fucking bizarre bloke. 

“I’ve still got a headache, if that’s anything to be worried about,” explained Charlie. “Don’t exactly know why, since the first thing I did when I got back to my flat was take painkillers.”

“That is weird,” said Nathan. “Not as weird as the tingling sensation in my anus, you know."

“Would you  _ please  _ stop talking about your anus?” demanded Charlie. “Seriously, it’s grim and I don’t want to hear it.”

After that, everyone stayed quiet for a while, until Charlie’s music was interrupted by a sudden crashing sound. She turned to look at whatever had happened, and was surprised to see that Kelly had pushed Nathan over, spilling his bucket of water in the process. 

* * *

Kelly didn’t come back after she stormed off, presumably to cool off. Alisha unsurprisingly didn’t do anything, and the goon with the oversized cap didn’t show up. The probation worker was supposed to regularly check on them, but he’d apparently fucked off somewhere. It wasn’t exactly inspiring, so the rest of them decided to give up, too. Alisha wandered off into the locker room, while the boys went into the main room of the community centre, deciding to have a bit of a pissabout with the foosball table.

Charlie pulled up a chair and sat down not too far away from the boys. Nathan and Curtis were focusing way too much on their sporadic game of foosball, while Simon was just standing there, hovering like a lost child. Charlie popped her earphones in, but kept her music on a low volume. 

“It’s a shame more women don’t commit crime,” said Nathan, which gained Charlie’s attention. She probably knew where the conversation was about to go, but she was intrigued to listen regardless, so she yanked an earphone out. “Why do you think that is?”

“Probably something to do with the testosterone,” replied Charlie, glancing through her texts. “They say that men have an evolutionary tendency towards risk and violent behaviour. I think it’s something to do with how men seize the opportunity to commit crimes.”

“Wha--how exactly do you know all this?” demanded Nathan.

“I told you. My uncle’s a lawyer.”

“Anyway,” continued Nathan, ignoring Charlie’s very solid points, “the way I see it, we’ve lucked out, man.”

“How’s that?” asked Curtis. 

“Well, there’s three of us, and three of them. It makes it all even,” explained Nathan. “I’m talkin’ about gettin’ laid! There’s one for each of us. So, how are we gonna divide them up?”

“I cannot believe what I’m hearing right now,” scoffed Charlie. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m out of the running, considering I’m in a relationship. If I hear my name mentioned in this weird conversation, I will throw a chair at whoever mentions me.”

“In that case, that kind of fucks it for you, weird kid,” explained Nathan. “I’m not bein’ funny, like, but if that one over there is really tellin’ the truth and she is in a relationship, I don’t see this workin’ out for you. Sorry.”

Charlie smiled as she saw a new text from her girlfriend.  **What dehumanising task have you been asked to deal with today? Let me know if you’re down to get a few drinks later.**

Tapping her leg against the laminated floor, Charlie wondered if getting a few drinks with Danielle was a good idea. She was in the mood to have a casual night out with her girlfriend, but she had community service again tomorrow, and needed to be up early. Plus, she really didn’t want to deal with a headache for the third day in a row.

**Someone graffitied “I AM GOING TO KILL YOU” onto the side of the community centre. In red spray-paint too. I’m not too sure about drinks yet. I’ve had a killer headache since yesterday, and it’s still pretty persistent. I’ll let you know at the end of the day.**

Deciding that she couldn’t possibly wait around to hear the boys talking about who they’d fuck, Charlie wandered out of the rec room and looked around the hallways. Alisha was perched on one of the curved sofas near the locker room, playing absent-mindedly with her water bottle. 

“You know,” said Charlie as she approached Alisha, “considering the probation worker’s dicked off elsewhere, you could probably just grab your phone from his office. I’m guessing that’s where he put them. It’d be an even weirder situation if he dicked off with everyone’s phones in his pockets.”

“It’s probably locked,” sighed Alisha. “He’s a fucking wanker. All of that shit about doing something positive, and he’s decided to piss off. Why should we be making a difference if he’s just gonna disappear?”

“I always thought probation workers were generally interested in actually helping the offenders they’re supposed to be managing, but I guess not,” drawled Charlie. “I’m gonna grab something from the vending machine. Want anything?”

“Nah, I’m good,” said Alisha. “I still find it weird that you’re here. You weren’t exactly someone who I thought’d end up doing community service.”

“No-one thought that. Well, if they did, I didn’t know about it,” sighed Charlie. “I had to defer going to uni. Then again, saying that, I don’t even know if I want to go anymore.”

“I guess you can always see closer to the time.”

Charlie shrugged and headed towards the vending machine, subtly rolling her eyes as the boys wandered out of the main room. She quickly pushed £1.20 into the vending machine and grabbed her can of Dr. Pepper, which would inevitably fizz up and explode in her face if she opened it straight away.

“Wanna lend us a few quid so I can get a can?” asked Nathan, leaning up against the vending machine as if his general stance was supposed to impress Charlie.

“Are you actually going to pay me back if I do?” asked Charlie, immediately recognising that he probably wouldn’t be able to afford to pay her back, considering that he was homeless and living in the community centre. “I mean, I’m not too fussed about a few quid, but it’s the principle of borrowing money, isn’t it?”

“Are you always so pedantic about everything?” 

Charlie rolled her eyes and quickly wandered over to where she had previously been sitting. Simon had cornered himself and was sitting on the floor, quite literally looking like the loner of the group, while Curtis was sulkily leaning up against the wall, thumbing the chain around his neck. Elsewhere, Charlie heard an excessive amount of shuffling before a loud thunk echoed out. Moments later, Nathan wheeled over to the rest of the group in a stray wheelchair, holding a can of Diet Coke and looking at it as if he’d just won the lottery.

“When I was in sixth form, you came to my school,” started Alisha, turning to face Curtis. An awfully smug expression was slapped across her face. “You gave this big talk about athletics, all your medals and that.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” agreed Charlie.

“So, I’m guessin’ you’re not going to the Olympics?” said Nathan.

“Funny,” spat Curtis. He already looked pretty irritated. Whatever he’d done to get community service was probably a fairly touchy subject, but the papers hadn’t come to any definitive conclusion of what he’d done. They all generally said that it was a drug-related incident, but there was a lot of speculation regarding what it was about.

“I heard he was dealing crack,” said Alisha.

“What? I wasn’t dealing crack!” exclaimed Curtis.

“Nah, nah, the papers said it was steroids,” Nathan added, which clearly wasn’t an appreciated addition to the conversation. Alisha said something about steroids having the ability to ‘shrivel your dick’.

“It wasn’t steroids! I’m not a cheat. That stuff in the papers was bullshit,” groaned Curtis.

“So, what was it, then?” asked Charlie. “The general consensus in the papers was that it was a drug-related incident. It wasn’t crack, and it wasn’t steroids, either. It had to be something, right?”

“I got caught with a little bit of coke, alright? I messed up one time,” he explained.

“No one gets community service for possession,” remarked Alisha.

“If it was anyone else, they’d have got a caution. I get two-hundred hours of community service and a two-year ban from athletics. They said, ‘cos of my profile, they needed to send a message.”

“You let yourself down,” started Nathan. Charlie sighed and buried her face in her hands, knowing exactly where things would go. “You let the kids down. You let your parents down.”

Before Nathan could go any further, Curtis exploded in a ball of rage. “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled, advancing over to Nathan and pushing his wheelchair before grabbing the collar of his jumpsuit. Despite Curtis’ advancement, Nathan still looked smug. “All I ever did was train! You know nothing! I shouldn’t even fucking be here!”

Charlie could practically see flames coming off Curtis. Even so, that didn’t stop Nathan. “You can’t hit someone in a wheelchair!” he exclaimed. To that, Curtis shoved Nathan away and stomped back over to where he’d been before Nathan had sent him over the edge.

“You wanna know what I got done for?” asked Alisha, breaking the ice. Her signature cheeky smirk had returned to her lips. 

“Not really,” breathed Nathan.

Charlie didn’t really pay all too much attention. It was a very Alisha story, really -- she drove her friend to a party, found out that said friend’s boyfriend was fucking another girl, and then proceeded to get pulled over by the police. She was already banned from driving, and then she decided to give a blowjob to a police officer’s breathalyser. 

After the boys essentially recovered from -- well, watching Alisha give a blowjob to her bottle of water -- the attention turned to Charlie. “Come on, Charlie,” said Alisha. “What did you do? I mean, it’s the perfect time to tell us what your deal is.”

“Fine,” sighed Charlie, throwing her phone onto the cushions of the sofa. “I pushed my stepbrother down a set of stairs, and he almost died.”

To no surprise, silence fell across the group. Everyone looked stunned. Simon’s eyes had seemingly quadrupled in size, and looked as if they were about to pop out of his pale head, while Alisha’s mouth was hanging open. Nathan just looked extremely baffled, and Curtis looked simultaneously astonished and angry.

“Hold on. I have several questions,” said Alisha, finally breaking the silence. “You pushed Callum down a set of stairs? And you’re  _ not  _ in prison? How the fuck does that work?”

“It’s a long story,” started Charlie. “Callum forced me to deal on his behalf. It wasn’t often, but things picked up and we were getting too much attention, so I stopped dealing for him. When I pushed him down the stairs, it wasn’t as simple as it sounds. We were out for his birthday, and he forced me to walk down the stairs of Covent Garden station with him. He started harassing me and told me that I had to start dealing for him again. I told him that I wasn’t going to, because this was a few months before I was meant to be going to uni. He got violent quickly. In an act of self-defense, I stomped on his foot. He slipped and fell. I made the mistake of running out of the station. I was planning on getting a train to Norwich, but I was found just as I was trying to buy a ticket.”

“Shit,” scoffed Alisha. “Callum was always a cunt.”

“He sounds like one,” agreed Curtis. “What happened to him? Is he dead?”

“Nope,” continued Charlie. “He’s still in the hospital, though. I haven’t seen him, so I don’t know the extent of the physical damage, but he’s been in there for a few months. When he’s in a fit state, he’s going to have a trial too, because they found drugs on him & there’s footage of him… well, hitting me.”

After that, there was nothing but silence across the group. What else could be said? Charlie’s crime was fucking heavy, and no joke could be made that would feel appropriate for what had been admitted. Everything seemed calm and civil for a few minutes, but they felt like forever for Charlie.  _ I should’ve just made something up,  _ she thought.  _ I should’ve told them anything else. Anything else but what actually happened.  _

_ I’ve fucked it all up. Again. _

Charlie’s thoughts were the only things she could hear for a few moments until, out of the blue, Kelly crashed through the nearest door, immediately tripping over her own feet but getting back up again relatively quickly to slam the door behind her.

“He’s gonna kill us!” she screamed.


	3. ice white, loud and dramatic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the break in uploading chapters. This one is very long, so it'll require a fair bit of patience, but it's definitely the chapter I'm proudest of so far. I'm currently counting this fanfiction as a part of NaNoWriMo, so I'm hoping to get chapters out at a relatively fast pace, as long as I'm proud of what's inside. As always, trigger warnings are below.
> 
> Trigger Warnings: death, murder, graphic descriptions of violence, blood, unwanted sexual advances, questionable & vulgar language

Charlie wasn’t all too good with people she didn’t know that well, and Kelly was someone she didn’t know well enough yet. Charlie knew the general basis of what Kelly had done to get community service, yes, but she didn’t know much else about her -- with that, Charlie had no idea how to deal with the situation unfolding. Kelly’s face was stained with smeared makeup. She was visibly crying and shaking. 

“Nice entrance,” laughed Nathan from his wheelchair. “Very dramatic!”

_ Maybe now isn’t the best time for comments like that,  _ thought Charlie. Before she had the chance to verbalise what she was thinking, Kelly exploded with information. “The probation worker’s just attacked me! Somethin’ really weird is happenin’. I’m hearin’ these voices. It’s like I can hear what people are thinkin’!”

It was quite the statement, really. Had this girl  _ really  _ just suggested that she could hear other people’s thoughts? Kelly seemed pretty sincere. In any other situation, Charlie probably would’ve laughed it off, but Kelly looked completely and utterly serious. “Awh, have you been sniffing glue?” asked Alisha, clearly mocking Kelly. 

“The storm, the lightnin’ -- I dunno, it’s just done somethin’ to us!” continued Kelly. 

“Okay,” Nathan started, wheeling to Kelly in an awkward fashion, “if you can hear our thoughts, what am I thinkin’ now? Hm?”

“You think it’s bullshit?!” shouted Kelly, staring at Nathan as if  _ he  _ was the one thinking something that was incredibly stupid. The whole thing sounded like an elaborate lie that was a part of a method acting exercise or something like that. Even if Kelly was an amateur actor, she probably wouldn’t be so sincere if she was just acting.

“Of course I think it’s bullshit! You don’t need to be a mind-reader to know that,” he scoffed.

“Why are you in a wheelchair?!” Kelly demanded.

“It was the storm,” sighed Nathan. “That strange tingling sensation in my anus? It’s spread through my body and now I can’t feel my legs!”

“Alternatively, he’s in a wheelchair because he’s dicking around, which is no surprise there,” added Charlie. “Kelly, are you alright? You seem pretty serious about this. If this has happened, we can file an official complaint or we can call the police.”

“What do you mean the probation worker attacked you?” asked Curtis.

“This does sound like complete shit,” Alisha continued.

“He is out there and he chased me!” Even if this was a total farce, and just a brilliantly orchestrated act, Kelly was extremely unyielding in her statement. 

“Something happened to me, too,” said Simon, which was actually one of the first things Charlie had heard him say all day. He was usually so quiet, but now he was admitting that something had happened to him, too?

“Did you pop your cherry? Oh, we’re all very happy for you!” exclaimed Nathan, flapping his left hand around. Charlie scoffed. “Oi, what are you scoffin’ for?”

“Earlier, when we were in the locker room, I was invisible,” continued Simon. There was a lot of determination and seriousness in his voice, that was certain -- but this? This was  _ not  _ what Charlie expected to hear. “I turned invisible.”

Simon repeated his statement as if he barely believed it himself. And maybe he didn’t, but he looked completely serious. Charlie was amazed. Simon seemed like a very intelligent young adult, but this was something else entirely.

“So, she’s psychic, and you can turn invisible? That seems likely,” said Curtis, clearly not believing a word of what Kelly & Simon were saying. 

“Yeah! Did anyone witness this miraculous disappearance?” added Nathan.

“You were all there,” replied Simon.

“Er, I think we might’ve witnessed you vanishing into thin air,” Alisha scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“You didn’t. You were standing right there. You couldn’t see me.”

_ Talk about creepy. An already sketchy-looking guy turning invisible in a locker room while people are getting changed?  _ thought Charlie. Even though Kelly could allegedly read minds, there wasn’t a single dirty look flashed in Charlie’s general direction.

“Alright. Do it, then. Turn invisible,” demanded Nathan, having rolled himself over to Simon. Simon proceeded to do something that looked incredibly bizarre -- he tilted his head up to the ceiling and made a sound that could only be described as a drawn-out creak. Once he was done doing whatever he’d been doing, he looked down at Nathan and waved his hand in his face. “Oh, my God! He’s disappeared!”

Obviously, he hadn’t, and Simon was met with an empty can of Diet Coke hitting his forehead. “You two are hilarious. Really, keep takin’ that medication,” laughed Nathan, wheeling himself towards the door. Kelly dashed out in front of him and slammed her hands down on either wheel, looking terrified as ever.

“Don’t go out there! He will kill you!”

“Of course he will, ‘cos he’s such a badass!” countered Nathan, clearly still not believing a word of what Kelly was saying.

“I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with you, Nathan. Whether it’s true or not -- and I highly doubt it  _ isn’t,  _ Kelly is visibly shaken up. What are you going to get from going outside? You can breathe easily in here, and I doubt the weather’s exactly spectacular,” snapped Charlie. “I know this whole situation seems batshit, but you should really learn to acknowledge everyone’s emotions.”

Nathan moved to make another insensitive comment, having likely ignored everything that Charlie was saying, until Curtis interrupted them. “She’s tellin’ the truth!” he shouted.

Charlie’s eyebrows instinctively furrowed, and everyone’s attention was suddenly focused on Curtis. He appeared to be in shock -- his eyes screamed surprise, while he was slightly trembling and his breaths were coming out in long, heavy gasps as if he’d been running for hours without a single drop of water.

“Hold on,” started Charlie. “A minute ago, you were taking the absolute piss out of Kelly and Simon. The fuck has changed?”

“Yeah, yeah, and you know this how? I suppose you’re psychic now, too?” Nathan said, turning his chair around to face Curtis. 

“All this,” started Curtis. “It’s already happened once. I opened the door. Something weird happened that pushed the probation worker away, but he got back up. He killed you.”

Kelly’s face was now incredibly pale. Curtis was telling this story as if it had legitimately happened, which was just baffling. “You were right there,” he continued. “You were dead. You were all just standing there. Everything froze. Time went backwards.”

“What are you saying? What, you turned back time?” queried Alisha. There was a massive sense of skepticism in her voice. She was looking between Curtis, Simon and Kelly as if they had all escaped from the local psychiatric ward. 

“This just gets better by the second!” exclaimed Nathan, actually deciding to remove himself from the wheelchair he’d grown so attached to. He turned around, advancing towards the door.

“Everything happened again. Exactly the same. I’m tellin’ you,  _ don’t  _ open that door!” shouted Curtis. Nathan wasn’t paying anyone any attention, to nobody’s surprise. “No!”

All Charlie could hear was her heart thumping in her chest as Nathan pushed the door open. It was only ajar at best, but a few seconds later, Nathan turned back to face the group, all cockiness having escaped from his face; instead of any visible smugness, the only emotion slapped across his face was true fear, clearly a result of whatever he’d seen.

“He’s right! The probation worker’s gone mental!” he proclaimed, having finally realised the actual gravity of the situation. Before he could say or do anything else, the shadow of a bulky man smashed against the door, banging on the glass in a desperate attempt to get through. Charlie shrieked and jumped to her feet, grabbing her phone in the process. Dashing towards the rest of the group, Charlie realised exactly how cold her hands were. She’d heard about stuff like that -- some hormone caused it, but that was the least of her worries. She shoved her phone in her pocket and tried to ignore how much she was shaking.

“Maybe he’s on crystal meth,” suggested Alisha, though Charlie doubted that it was actually a legitimate suggestion. “That stuff makes you crazy. My friend did it, and she nearly shagged her brother. And he’s proper ugly.”

“The graffiti. I’m going to kill you. He wrote it,” Simon suggested. Charlie closed her eyes slowly and exhaled audibly. She felt dizzy and nauseous at the same time.  _ This can’t be happening,  _ she thought.  _ I can’t do this.  _

“What did I say? I said there was a hidden meaning,” insisted Nathan. With another thud on the door, the entire group jumped. “Or not.”

“Did anythin’ happen to you two?” Kelly asked, turning to face Charlie and Alisha. Alisha responded with a short, blunt ‘no’, while Charlie just shook her head. She could barely stand up without feeling like she was about to throw up the contents of her stomach. Talking wasn’t exactly an option.

“We should call the police,” suggested Alisha. It was a legitimate idea until Simon reminded Alisha that the probation worker had everyone’s phones, excluding Charlie’s. “Charlie, come on. Call the police. They’ll sort this out. They have to.”

“They won’t listen to us,” she whispered, trembling as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. “They wouldn’t send out a police car in response to six young offenders saying that their probation worker had gone mental. They’d think it was a wind up. And even if they  _ did  _ send out a police car, they’d probably be too late.”

“Well, that’s really fucking optimistic, isn’t it?” remarked Nathan. 

Charlie squeezed her eyes shut and hoped that the consistent thumping would just stop. Her head was pounding, and she felt like she was about to collapse onto the cold tiled floor beneath her. 

And then, miraculously, the banging  _ did  _ stop. Charlie opened her eyes and looked around the group, realising that she hadn’t been abandoned -- everyone was still there, and still looking at the door in complete and utter terror. 

“You dickhead! Why’d you come back here? You should’ve gone for help!” spat Alisha, turning all attention back to Kelly.  _ The girl’s probably overwhelmed enough,  _ thought Charlie.  _ What is starting on her going to do?  _

“Er, what do you know, bitch?” returned Kelly, maliciousness in her voice. Understandably, she didn’t exactly respond well to being called a dickhead. Alisha called her a chav, which was definitely another mistake, because Kelly returned with a genuinely frightening threat about kicking Alisha in the vagina with enough force that her mum would be able to feel it.

“Her mum’ll feel it? How does that work?” asked Nathan, who was clearly just trying to be jovial again after what’d happened.

“I don’t think those are the most pressing questions, Nathan,” sighed Charlie.

“He tried to kill me! I came back to warn you lot and I could’ve left ya. I’m sick of every single one of ya judgin’ me. You can all fuck off!” shouted Kelly.

“Whatever. I’m gettin’ out of here,” scoffed Alisha, who started jogging towards the back door.

“Yeah, out the back way,” agreed Nathan. Everyone started running towards the only other available exit, but they stopped when Nathan slipped and collapsed onto his back. Charlie caught herself before she had the chance to fall, jumping out of her skin when her feet skidded across the tiled floor. 

Dark red liquid was spilled out across the floor, clearly coming from one of the nearby lockers. Charlie felt the blood in her face drain as Nathan got back up onto his feet and started gagging. There was blood on the floor, and Charlie was not going to be able to deal with it well.

“Fuck,” she whispered to herself, practically collapsing against the nearest wooden beam. Curtis approached where the blood was coming from -- one of the lockers. It looked like it was bleeding itself, with red smears seeping through the four thin grates at the top of the locker. Panting out of fear, Charlie watched as Curtis opened the locker.

What she saw was not a favourable image. It was the seventh young offender, the one who’d disappeared. The pale, aspiring gangster who’d obsessed over a foolishly oversized cap. He wasn’t wearing it -- and even if he had been wearing it, it would’ve fallen off because of the way his head crumpled out of the locker when the door was opened. Charlie blanched. 

She hadn’t even known his name.

“I did wonder what’d happened to him,” mumbled Nathan. His usual smug nature had completely disappeared.

“He’s going to kill us,” whispered Alisha, covering her mouth with her hands. Charlie sluggishly pushed herself away from the beam she’d been leaning on and headed towards Alisha, solely intending to comfort her.

“Turn back time. Stop this happenin’,” Nathan demanded, turning his attention to Curtis. 

“I don’t know how it works!” replied Curtis, who looked just as terrified as the rest of them.

“Oh, that’s great! That’s really useful,” said Nathan, who looked like he was lamenting in the death of their fellow young offender, and the group’s probable fate.

Charlie heard Curtis whisper something to Alisha. It sounded supportive and friendly, but any friendliness was suddenly gone. An audible gasp escaped Curtis’ mouth, and he grabbed onto Alisha with both hands. He looked as if he’d suddenly gone completely feral.

“I’ve got to have sex with you right now!” he demanded, looking at Alisha with nothing but unbridled lust in his eyes. “You’re so beautiful.”

“What the fuck is up with him?” asked Nathan. Charlie hoped he wasn’t expecting an answer from anyone, because she doubted that anyone actually knew.

“Let’s go! Let’s do it, right now, raw!” continued Curtis. Alisha looked horrified, and promptly pushed him away, disgust in her eyes.

“Get off me, you freak!” she yelled.

“What?” Curtis asked. A very confused expression was written across his face. Did he seriously not remember his incredibly insistent advances?

“There’s a time and a place, mate,” spat Charlie. “Now is not the time or place for that shit.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Curtis. Alisha lifted her hand, looking to slap Curtis, which was a completely fair and understandable move, but he stopped her before she could make contact with his face. That same lustful, carnal look returned to his face. “You’re so hot! I’m gonna bone you! I’m gonna shag you senseless!”

“Let go of me!” shouted Alisha, pulling herself away from Curtis again.

“What? What did I do?” Curtis repeated, looking just as baffled as he’d been when Alisha had pulled herself off him the first time.

“Er, you said you were gonna shag her?” said Kelly.

“Yeah, and you were gettin’ your chap out,” added Nathan, pointing to Curtis’ crotch. Curtis promptly told Nathan to shut up, and zipped up his jumpsuit again, looking equally embarrassed and confused. 

“It was when you were touching her,” observed Simon, looking at Alisha with an inquisitive, curious look on his face. Alisha, who still looked horrified, looked down at her trembling hands as if they weren’t even her own. Without saying anything, she approached Simon and pressed a hand against his neck. Charlie recoiled as she watched Simon’s blue veins protrude from the side of his neck. He looked just as horny as Curtis had. “I’m so hard for you! I wanna rip your clothes off and piss on your tits!”

“Okay, that is just fucking repulsive,” Charlie said, looking at Simon in horror as he fell slack to the floor, probably as a result of all of his pent-up sexual tension coming to light. 

“What is happening to me?!” yelled Alisha.

“You sick bastard!”

Any sense of general repulsion towards what Simon had said and the sudden incredulous discovery of Alisha’s supposed power was interrupted, because a shadowy figure dressed in grey clothes suddenly smashed through the door, holding a massive metal object that looked eerily like a scythe. It was the probation worker. Charlie yelped and pushed herself against the nearest locker, terrified as she locked eyes with the man who was supposed to be monitoring the group. He looked completely and utterly enraged. There was no doubt -- he was ready to kill.

The general consensus of the room was a sensation of terror. Everyone was screaming and yelling. Even as the probation worker approached Charlie, all she could hear was the screaming of her fellow young offenders. She was about to die -- how could she possibly stop it? She jammed her eyes shut and focused on the noise surrounding her, hoping that her inevitable death would be quick and relatively painless. All of the noise around her was generating into one clump of white noise. Any coherent words that were coming from the people around her weren’t words to her anymore. Charlie clapped her hands over her ears, begging that the high-pitched, horrible noise would just go away. She was silently begging that everything would disappear, and then--

As if she suddenly had no control over her movements, her eyes flew open. The white noise reached a climax just as the probation worker swung his metal scythe towards her, and suddenly, an ice-white dome bounced off Charlie’s form, and sent him flying. He flew through the air and landed on the tiled floor with a loud thunk, remaining motionless on the ground.

Everyone turned to look at Charlie, whose breathing was ragged and out-of-sync. She felt like she’d been shocked back to life. Electricity felt like it was traversing through her body. Every single noise around her was suddenly coherent again.

“What did you just do?” asked Alisha, looking at her with wide, terrified eyes.

“I don’t know,” Charlie gasped, pressing her hand against her chest. 

“It was like a forcefield,” Simon said. “He was about to swing at you, and suddenly he was flying through the air. Your eyes -- they turned white.”

Charlie looked at him, doubting exactly what he’d said. She felt the burst of energy form into a dome, but the part about her eyes just sounded ridiculous. “All I could hear was white noise,” she muttered. “Did I just kill him?”

“Well, I’m no expert,” Nathan said, “but you see how his head is caved in like that? And how his chest isn’t rising and falling?”

Charlie approached the slumped body of the probation worker with the rest of the group, and felt her heart sink to her stomach. His head was caved in, and he clearly wasn’t breathing. She’d killed their probation worker.

Just as she felt like she was about to faint, the probation worker suddenly became animated again, and reached out to grab Kelly’s ankle. “CHAV!” he screamed, grabbing ahold of Kelly’s ankle. Even though one of her ankles was being held by the probation worker’s hand, the other was free. A probable combination of whatever Kelly’s feelings were, she moved her other ankle and instinctively started stomping violently on the probation worker’s head.

“I AM NOT A CHAV!” she shouted, stomping viciously on his head.

If he wasn’t dead before, he was certainly dead after Kelly removed her foot from his head and looked at the damage she’d done. His head had been completely pushed in. His scalp was just a combination of his skin, his crushed skull and a lot of blood leaking from the source of the wound.

“Yep, that’ll do it,” squeaked Nathan, grabbing ahold of his curly hair.

“You killed our probation worker!” shouted Alisha. Charlie didn’t know exactly who Alisha was directing her statement at -- Charlie had done most of the damage, but Kelly had finished off the job. 

“This is very, very bad,” muttered Nathan. 

“I feel sick,” groaned Alisha, clapping a hand over her mouth.

“We should call the police,” said Curtis. In any other situation, it would’ve been a sound recommendation. “It was self-defense.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s right,” added Alisha. “We show him the dead boy in the locker, and they’ll do some CSI shit and figure it all out.”

“They won’t believe us,” said Kelly.

“We just tell them the truth!” Any suggestion about telling the police the truth was pointless, so Charlie just shook her head as she glanced between Curtis and the others.

“What’s our story? That he can turn invisible and that you can turn back time? It doesn’t matter what we tell them! They’ll say we’re lyin’. They’ll say we killed ‘em both! No one’s gonna believe ya, not anymore.”

“Kelly’s right,” agreed Charlie, anxiously scratching at her arms. “Telling them the truth would get us all locked up in psych wards for the rest of our lives. Even if they dispatched a forensic team, we’d almost certainly be considered guilty. Even though there’s six of us who are all still breathing, nobody’s gonna believe a group of young offenders if we called up the police.”

“If there’s no body, there’s no crime.”

Simon’s voice was, as always, a quiet, reserved squeak. Turning to face him, Charlie noticed that he was patting his fringe down. It was something he did a lot, but especially when he was in stressful situations. “We should bury them under the flyover,” he continued.

“Yeah, and how do we do that? Someone’s gonna see us,” countered Alisha.

“No, no. We give ‘em a quick little clean-up. We put ‘em in those wheelchairs, wheel ‘em up there, and if anyone asks, we’re just a bunch of young offenders takin’ a couple of specials for a walk in the sunshine!” suggested Nathan. Even though it was fucking ridiculous, Charlie didn’t see any other way out of the shit that’d happened.

“We need bleach,” added Charlie. “We have to clean up the evidence that’s here. Plus, we should write an email under the probation worker’s name explaining that the doors have been smashed up.”

They got to work quickly. The probation worker’s keys had been scattered across the room when he’d hit the tiling, so Charlie picked them up and headed to the storage room, where she found a few gallons of bleach. Quickly looking up how to clean blood in an incognito tab, she noted everything down in her notes app. They would have to deal with the blood before burying the bodies.

After they’d all made a team effort of cleaning up the bleach, everyone else got to work while Charlie and Simon entered the probation worker’s office and sent off an email to the department heads informing them that the doors had been smashed up. Charlie tapped away at the keyboard while Simon suggested how to make it look & sound as professional as possible, which was key. It was only when she was about to send the email that Charlie learned the name of her former probation worker: Tony.

They worked out a plan that was as good as it could possibly be. Two of them would be walking ahead of the group with the shovels to avoid suspicion, while the other four would be wheeling the bodies to the destination. They walked a longer route to avoid being seen by anyone. 

By the time they got to the flyover, Charlie was sweating, but she still had work to do. The group worked on digging a hole that was deep enough for the two bodies. She knew that, generally, bodies were buried six feet underground, but they probably needed another foot or two, as they were burying two people. The ground was quite soft, and thus easy to dig up -- as easy as digging a hole to bury two people was. Then again, they didn’t have a choice.

None of them knew the depth of the hole, and it didn’t really matter. The burial wasn’t exactly going to be ceremonial. No coffins, no mourning relatives, no obnoxious bouquets. They were getting the worst possible burials imaginable. Tony and Gary were about to be buried together in an unmarked grave under a flyover. Charlie blinked slowly as Nathan and Kelly tipped the bodies into the hole, pursing her lips as she heard their limp bodies hit the dirt. If everything went well, their bodies would never be found, and they would never be seen again.

Charlie wedged her shovel into the dirt.  _ How morbid. If anything went well, we wouldn’t be burying them right now _ , she thought, scooping a pile of dirt up with her shovel and tossing it into the deep hole. She felt Kelly’s eyes on her for a few seconds, but she didn’t say anything.

“I’m pretty sure this breaches the terms of my ASBO,” said Nathan, taking a break from shovelling dirt. 

“We don’t tell anyone about this, yeah? About the storm, or what it did to us, or anythin’,” declared Kelly.

“We’re about to bury our probation worker. We don’t want to be drawing any attention to ourselves,” added Nathan. For the first time in the two days that Charlie had known him, she noticed the seriousness of his tone. It wasn’t necessarily surprising, as it wasn’t exactly the time to be cracking insensitive jokes, but Charlie also wasn’t expecting Nathan to necessarily talk sense, either.

“This stays between the six of us. This day? It dies with us,” said Charlie. “We don’t tell anyone about our powers, and we definitely do not say a fucking word about what we’re doing right now.”

“I don’t want anyone to know,” Alisha said, a horribly bitter tone to her voice. “I cannot be a freak.”

“What about you?” Nathan’s question was directed at Curtis, who looked moody and angry at the same time. “There’s no goin’ back now, man. You’re just as screwed as us. You’re black and famous. You’re probably more screwed.”

“I shouldn’t even be here,” spat Curtis.

Charlie wondered what Curtis meant when he said that. In the present, he was burying two bodies. None of them wanted to be there. Then again, earlier that day, he’d been wallowing in self-pity over how he wouldn’t have been given community service if he wasn’t an up-and-coming Olympian athlete. Deciding to keep her thoughts to herself, Charlie continued shovelling dirt into the unofficial gravesite of Tony and Gary. 

“Wait, hold on!” interjected Nathan. “All of you have some kind of special power. Everyone can do somethin’ except me. He can do somethin’-- _ he  _ can do somethin’, and I can’t? That’s ridiculous--look at him! How does that make any sense?”

“Maybe you can do something,” suggested Simon, generally ignoring the insults that’d just been thrown at him. “You just haven’t found it out yet.”

“Yeah. Right. What if I can’t feel pain?”

Charlie snorted as Kelly whacked Nathan over the head. “Did ya feel that?!” she snapped.

“Ow! Stop hittin’ me,” he whined.

“Maybe your power is counterproductive. You can’t control what you’re going to say, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it,” suggested Charlie, offering Nathan a smile that was rinsed with sarcasm. “Hang on a minute -- that’s just the type of twat you are.”

Nathan scoffed and flipped Charlie the middle finger, which she happily returned. She continued shovelling dirt into the hole until Kelly piped up again. “I couldn’t hear your thoughts until a few minutes ago,” remarked Kelly. “What was that about?”

“No idea. Maybe it’s something to do with my power,” sighed Charlie. “As soon as I sent him flying, my headache disappeared. Maybe it was something to do with that. I’m probably clutching at straws, though.”

Not another word was said until they finished covering the bodies. Charlie shoved her hands into the pockets of her jumpsuit and tapped her foot on the ground, making sure that it was all level. She watched Curtis and Nathan leave with the shovels, while Kelly and Simon folded the wheelchairs up and wheeled them back to the community centre. That left Charlie and Alisha, who were drinking in the silence.

“Are you alright?” Charlie asked, glancing over at her old friend. “Today’s been a fucking rollercoaster.”

“What do you think?” Even though they were friends, Alisha’s tone was hurtful, and would’ve made Charlie flinch if she didn’t have thicker skin. She knew Alisha was like this when she was upset. “Sorry. You’re right. Today’s been a car crash.”

“When Curtis was touching you and saying those things, I should’ve pulled him off you,” said Charlie. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”

“It’s fine,” Alisha said. “If you were anyone else, it wouldn’t be, but I know you’re not good with blood. Don’t worry about it. I just need a drink.”

“Fair enough.”

They walked back to the community centre together, but Alisha left without saying an official goodbye. It wasn’t really a surprise. They’d all been through a lot, but her power wasn’t exactly appealing. Charlie glanced at herself in the mirror. She’d be washing her jumpsuit again, undoubtedly. It wasn’t completely covered in blood, but it felt like it was covered in blood and, quite frankly, a multitude of sins. 

Just as she was pulling her shirt over her head, Charlie’s phone buzzed. Another text from her girlfriend.  **Feeling any better?** It was short and sweet. Even though Charlie’s pounding headache was gone, she was too emotionally drained to see her girlfriend. It wasn’t something she was going to do after such a rollercoaster of a day.

**Head’s still pounding. Don’t think this headache wants to go away today. I’d love to grab some drinks on the weekend if you’re up for it? Love you, always.**

After what was probably the worst introduction to community service possible, Charlie headed home, defeated and drained in every possible way.

After getting home, Charlie threw her jumpsuit into the washing machine and flopped onto her sofa. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically. Though the weather had been nice, Charlie’s second day of community service was reprehensibly bad. If they miraculously got away with killing their probation worker and burying his body in a hole under a flyover, the entire first two days of Charlie’s community service could easily be written into a gripping horror novel. Or a film. Or a TV show. Or all of the above. 

After the washing machine had finished rinsing her jumpsuit of any remaining evidence of a crime, Charlie threw her jumpsuit over her airer, hoping that it would dry quickly. She couldn’t be bothered to keep an eye on the tumble dryer, because all she wanted to do was sleep the memories of the day away. She cracked open a can of cider and knocked it down quickly before she got into the shower again, scrubbing at her skin until she felt like it’d start washing away with the hot water cascading down her back.

Finally, Charlie crawled into bed and set her alarms for the morning, hoping to wake up as if the day had just been a morbid figment of her imagination.

* * *

When she woke up, Charlie initially forgot the happenings of the previous day. Everything was fine for a few minutes, but as soon as she saw her jumpsuit draped over her hanger, everything came flooding back to her. 

Kelly storming into the community centre, insisting that the probation worker had tried to kill her. Simon saying that he had turned invisible in the locker room. Curtis suddenly exclaiming that he’d turned back time to save Kelly. Alisha sending Curtis and Simon into men of pure, unfiltered desire. And then, what she’d done to the probation worker.

There wasn’t a logical explanation behind why Charlie had managed to fling the probation worker across the room without laying a hand on him, but there was no logic behind the whole situation. Getting struck by lightning and surviving with no physical injuries was one thing, but suddenly being gifted with a literal superpower as a direct result of the storm was completely and utterly unexplainable. 

_ Am I living in a fucking film? Is that what my life’s become?  _ Rolling over onto her side, Charlie grabbed her phone and glanced briefly at the texts that she’d received from her girlfriend.  _ God, if I can just get through today, I can see Fiona.  _

Seeing Fiona was essentially Charlie’s lifeline. She couldn’t get through the day without seeing Fiona. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen Fiona in months -- in fact, it’d only been a few days since they’d spent time together, but Charlie’s life had drastically changed over the span of 48 hours, and she needed to spend some time with the love of her life.

**I feel a lot better today. Can we go for drinks tonight? I don’t mind where we go. I just miss your face.** With a sigh, Charlie sent her text to Fiona and stretched her arms, waking herself up for the day. It was inevitable that someone from the council would assign a replacement probation worker to the group, and they’d ask if the group knew where Tony and Gary had disappeared to.

The truth was not going to end well. They’d have to make up a believable lie as a group, or just stay silent. Silence was probably the best way to tackle the inevitable questions they’d be asked. After all, lies were lies. Even though there were only six of them in the group, maintaining a lie for a prolonged period of time wasn’t exactly ideal. 

Charlie wandered into the kitchen and debated eating a substantial breakfast. After getting home, she’d downed a can of cider in record time, hopped in the shower and went to bed in an attempt to reset her life. In the last 24 hours, she’d only eaten two slices of toast, and she was getting hungry.

She decided on a bowl of Coco Pops and a banana. While the choice of cereal reminded her of her childhood, Charlie most certainly wasn’t a child anymore. She was an adult who’d made some terrible decisions, and now she was paying the price. Almost killing her stepbrother was one thing, but if anyone ever found out that she’d played a massive part in killing her probation worker… well, Charlie didn’t exactly know what would happen if anyone found out, but she guessed it wouldn’t exactly be good.

Just as Charlie started to peel her banana, her phone buzzed next to her. Instinctively, she assumed it’d be the police calling from the community centre, but she brightened significantly when she saw that Fiona was calling.

“Hey!” Charlie said as she picked up the phone and jammed her earphones in.

“Good morning, isn’t it? The weather’s a lot better than it was two days ago, and I get to see you later,” Fiona replied through the phone. Charlie giggled to herself. She could practically feel Fiona next to her. “How did you sleep?”

“Better than I’ve slept in a long time. That headache’s fucked right off, thankfully.”

“Good. I can’t wait to see you later,” continued Fiona. “Where do you want to go for drinks tonight? We can go into the city a bit and see if there are any fancy cocktail restaurants that are interesting, or we can go to one of the pubs around here.”

“I am not in the mood for a cocktail restaurant. Granted, I’ll probably fancy a cocktail or two, but I think the pub on the estate is more than enough. I don’t care about where we are, really. I just want to be back in your company.”

“Agreed,” sighed Fiona. “So, did you see that storm on Monday? It was fucking crazy, wasn’t it?”

Charlie froze in her place, almost choking on the bit of banana in her mouth. “Y-yeah,” she managed. “We were actually painting benches when it really hit. We managed to get inside just before lightning struck  _ exactly  _ where we were standing.”

“Fuck, that’s lucky. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

“Yeah, me too,” continued Charlie. “Our probation worker’s car got completely destroyed by one of those big chunks of ice, though. It was pretty funny until we realised our lives were in danger.”

“Jesus. How can he explain that to the mechanic? Sorry, mate -- my car got wrecked because a huge piece of ice fell from the sky and landed directly on my car,” joked Fiona. Charlie laughed along, but internally, she was bricking it.  _ If only you knew,  _ she thought. “So, aside from the storm, I’m guessing community service isn’t thrilling?”

“Nope,” lied Charlie. It was thrilling in the sense that their lives had been endangered by the man who was supposed to be helping them reform, but Charlie wouldn’t dare say that. “Yesterday, we had to clean graffiti. I imagine the rest of my time isn’t going to be that different.”

“Sounds shit. You don’t deserve to be serving those hours,” scoffed Fiona. “Your stepbrother’s lucky he’s not dead, really. When he can actually talk again, I bet your hours will be exonerated completely.”

“I hope so,” sighed Charlie. She was practically shrinking in her seat. She really didn’t like to talk about Callum. Even though it wasn’t all her fault, Charlie still felt a lot of blame for what she’d accidentally done to him. Most of the blame was probably forced upon her, since her life had changed drastically since she’d almost killed him, but she still felt like she could never fully go back to how her life was. “Look, I’ve got to get ready for today. I’m still in my pyjamas. See you later, yeah?”

“Yeah. Is eight good for you?” asked Fiona. 

“Yeah, that’s good for me,” replied Charlie, smiling weakly, even though she knew Fiona couldn’t see it. “I love you, Fi.”

“Love you too,” Fiona said. With no more words exchanged, Charlie hung up and immediately tossed her phone over to the other side of the sofa, putting her head in her hands.  _ I’m a monster,  _ she thought. 

Charlie kept telling herself it was self-defense as she got dressed, not really caring what she looked like.  _ In both instances, it was self-defense.  _ She wasn’t wrong, but after what’d happened to Callum, nobody looked at her as if she was an extremely intelligent young adult with a bright future ahead. And if anyone ever found out what they’d done to the probation worker, they’d all be locked away for good. Hell, if they found out the full extent of things, Charlie and her fellow young offenders would almost certainly be strapped up in a psych ward for the rest of their days. No one would  _ ever  _ believe six young offenders who claimed that they were forced to kill their probation worker in an act of self-defense.

It was a secret that had to stay as exactly that for the rest of their lives.

Charlie decided against staying in her apartment any longer. It wasn’t like she hated it -- in fact, it was lovely, but she couldn’t stay in one spot for too long without her thoughts taking over. She quickly shoved what she needed in her bag and headed out of her apartment, kicking aside the junk mail on her doorstep before she left.

She took her time getting to the community centre, looking out onto the water as she walked towards the building where, inevitably, a replacement probation worker was waiting, likely with a few police officers, too. Charlie was beyond worried -- she was frightened for herself and the others. If Gary and Tony’s bodies were  _ ever  _ discovered, it would be game over. They did a good job burying them and destroying the evidence, but she was convinced that it just wasn’t enough to get away with it completely.

Just as Charlie arrived outside of the community centre, she noticed two others were there too: Simon and Curtis. Nathan was probably just waking up -- well, there was a chance he wasn’t even awake yet. Charlie picked up her pace and headed towards the two boys, smiling weakly at them in an attempt to forget about their impending doom. 

“You alright?” Curtis said as Charlie joined them. She shrugged and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie, not really knowing what to say.

“Not really,” she sighed. “Considering the circumstances, I think I’m okay, but I really don’t know how today’s going to pan out.”

“The community centre’s open, by the way,” added Simon. “We were about to go in. I think someone must be in there.”

“Right,” she muttered. “Well, we can’t really avoid this, can we?”

They wandered into the community centre, preparing to face their inevitable doom, and headed straight for the locker room. For the first time since their community service had started, it was best if they all acted like model young offenders who were genuinely interested in reforming themselves. To Charlie’s surprise, Nathan was already in the locker room, and was just muttering to himself as he fiddled with the zipper of his jumpsuit.

“When’d you get here?” Curtis asked, taking the words out of Charlie’s mouth. Nathan looked up, almost as if he was surprised to see anyone else there. Charlie noticed immediately that he looked very tired, and understandably so. 

“Not too long ago,” Nathan muttered, though it was a blatant lie. “So, if anyone asks what happened yesterday, we say nothing, right? It’s just a completely normal day.”

Charlie nodded and opened her locker. What else could any of them say? They just had to do exactly what Nathan had said -- they had to pretend as if yesterday hadn’t been eventful in any way, shape or form. Hopefully, the email regarding the smashed-up glass doors wouldn’t be brought up. 

In complete silence, Charlie got dressed, running through the potential outcomes of whatever was about to happen. They could get arrested, but on what charges? Thinking about it, there wasn’t actually any concrete evidence to convict them on -- unless one of them slipped, of course, but Charlie was hoping that wasn’t going to happen. Of course, she could’ve placed her bets on who  _ would  _ be most likely to break under pressure, but she didn’t want to think about that. Hopefully, everything would go to plan and they’d insist that they hadn’t seen anything. 

Just as Charlie had finished getting dressed, Kelly and Alisha wandered into the locker room. Alisha didn’t look at all worried, but Charlie knew that she was probably just hiding her worries behind a stone-cold facade. Kelly looked as if she hadn’t slept, which wasn’t a surprise. As Charlie fiddled with her phone, Simon gently explained what Nathan had insisted.

Everyone was keeping to themselves until a woman wandered into the locker room. She was shockingly pale and incredibly skinny -- there was nothing to her, really. She had black hair that had seemingly been straightened, and her whole mood was put together by the colour palette of her frankly dull clothes. Everything about her was black and white. Was  _ this  _ who was going to be talking to them about Tony and Gary’s disappearances?

“When everyone has sorted themselves out, please come into the recreation room. I have some bad news,” she said. Charlie nodded, shoved her phone into her pocket and closed her locker. The rest of them reacted in their own ways, and followed the dark-haired woman into the rec room. “Stand in a row here, please.”

They all did just that. “I appreciate that this is quite a concerning subject for a Wednesday morning, but it’s important. Gary and my colleague Tony have both been reported missing. Their families are very worried about them. Have you seen anything unusual? Anything at all?” the woman asked, looking down the line. 

Charlie decided to stay silent. Although she was a good liar, she didn’t know how she could lie about such a concerning subject. It was certainly safer to just not say anything. She glanced around at her fellow young offenders, who were all silent and stiff, except Nathan.

_ Oh, you have got to be kidding me _ , thought Charlie. The curly-haired Irishman was standing there with one hand at his side, but the other raised slightly in the air. Was he  _ really  _ about to rat them all out, especially after the experience they’d all had? “You saw something?” asked the woman, looking at Nathan with a flicker of hope in her big, dark eyes.

“A few days ago,” started Nathan, “I go into the toilets to do my business. Tony and Gary were in there. They are butt naked. Tony has Gary by his hair, like this, and he’s just doin’ him, doggy style.” Nathan’s clearly false statement was accompanied by a lot of gestures and movements that were just the cherry on top of the very,  _ very  _ shit cake. He continued the story by screaming graphic lines that made Charlie visibly put her head in her hands. “So, I’m guessin’, they’ve run away to continue their illicit homosexual affair. I ask you, in this world of intolerance and prejudice, who are we do condemn them?”

They all stood there in silence, expecting the woman to snap. “I appreciate that you may find this humorous, but this is a very serious situation. If any of you have any  _ valuable  _ information, please find me in my office,” the woman said, looking at Nathan with disgust in her eyes. 

“What are we doing today?” Charlie asked just as the woman started heading back to the office. “I mean, for our community service. Should we finish cleaning off the graffiti?”

“Oh,” said the woman, crossing her arms. “I won’t be keeping you long today. You won’t have any official jobs to do. Just keep yourselves busy, and, as I said, if you have any information about Gary and Tony’s disappearances, come and find me in my office.”

* * *

Not too long after Nathan had told his very false and very,  _ very  _ ridiculous story about how Tony and Gary had allegedly engaged in an act of public decency by having sex, they all retreated to the roof, where there were an array of different coloured sofas and chairs, as well as a makeshift coffee table. For some reason, on the makeshift coffee table, there were two cans of beer. Naturally, Nathan advanced towards the beer and yanked a can out of the plastic pack rings, cracking it open without a care in the world.

“That’s probably out of date,” Charlie muttered as she sat down on one of the stray chairs, surprised at how comfortable it was. “I’d ask you if you really think that’s a good idea, but judging by your behaviour a few minutes ago, I don’t think you care about good ideas, do you?”

“Fuck it, man! It’s free beer,” Nathan proclaimed, taking a long drink of the clearly knock-off Aldi beer. He grimaced as he swallowed it, clearly not enjoying it as much as he probably thought he would. “Actually, on second thought, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”

“No shit,” Alisha scoffed, sitting herself down on one of the sofas. Simon perched awkwardly outside of the group, apparently not wanting to sit down. Kelly plonked herself onto one of the other chairs, while Curtis joined Alisha on the same sofa, looking at her with a certain bastardised combination of interest and lust. God, was he  _ still  _ reeling off whatever bullshit ‘power’ Alisha had been gifted? Nathan, on the other hand, wandered around the roof with one hand in the pocket of his jumpsuit and the other hand still holding the beer he’d opened.

“You know, I think we got away with it,” drawled Nathan, looking around at the group.

“Do you actually believe that, or are you just really dumb?” Curtis asked.

“I actually believe that!” Nathan responded, placing his free hand over his heart as if he was offended at Curtis’ question.

“Don’t act like that was a stupid question, Nathan, because we all know Curtis has a point. Whatever you were trying to do earlier was really,  _ really  _ stupid,” snapped Charlie. “It’s almost as if you explicitly told us to say that yesterday was a completely normal day, but ignored your own advice.”

“I was there,” Nathan continued, clearly ignoring what Charlie was saying. “I should have one of these bullshit powers.”

“You can ‘ave mine,” Kelly scoffed. “You wanna hear what people are thinkin’ about you?”

“No, not so much. I want something good, something from the A-List,” he drawled. Charlie honestly thought that telepathy was pretty cool, but obviously Kelly didn’t think that herself, and it was probably because most of the things she heard were explicitly about her. 

“Maybe you can fly,” Simon suggested. Charlie laughed and decided to stand up, stretching her legs.

“He’s not going to be able to fly,” countered Alisha, who looked incredibly dismayed.

“No, no, I wanna see where he’s going with this,” Charlie mused, crossing her arms as Nathan grabbed a small crate and placed it on the floor in front of the group. “Only a crate? Come on, man. We’re standing on a roof. If you can fly, it’d be pretty cool to see you launch yourself up into air after jumping off the roof of a community centre.”

“Oh, shove off,” Nathan snapped, teetering on the edge of the ridiculously small crate and raising an arm into the air as if he were Superman himself. As he jumped up into the air, hoping that gravity would whisk him away, he was forcefully dragged back down to the earth, landing on his stomach with a loud groan. “Awwww, nope. That’s not it.”

“Jumping off a little crate probably isn’t going to do much in the grand scheme of finding out what power you might have,” countered Charlie. “Like I said, it’s almost as if we’re on a roof.” 

Charlie’s suggestion was met with Nathan’s middle finger. “So, what happens now? Is this it?” Curtis asked, looking around at the group. “Are we going to be like this forever?”

“I don’t think any of us have a definitive answer for that,” Charlie replied, leaning on the wall as she glanced around at the group. “It doesn’t matter how smart we are as a group -- this is quite literally extraordinary shit that shouldn’t be a possibility in life.”

“What if we’re meant to be, like, superheroes?” Simon’s voice was small, as always. In an ordinary situation, his suggestion would be ludicrous -- honestly, it still was ludicrous, but he had a point. They had escaped death twice. Not even forty-eight hours ago, Charlie considered herself a normal-ish member of society when she ignored her community service order. 

“No offence, but in what kind of fucked-up world would that be allowed to happen?” Nathan asked. 

“I did  _ not  _ sign up for that,” scoffed Alisha. 

“Superheroes! I love this guy -- you prick!” continued Nathan, laughing to himself as he considered Simon’s question. And if it wasn’t such a bizarre situation, Charlie would probably be laughing to herself, too. Ultimately, after everything that’d happened, Simon actually had a point.

“What if there’s loadza people like us all over town?” Kelly asked.

“No. That kind of thing only happens in America. This will fade away. I’m tellin’ you -- by this time next week, it’ll be back to the same old boring shit.” 

Nathan’s statement was hopefully the truth, but Charlie wasn’t so sure. Had they really gotten away with killing their probation worker and burying him under the flyover? Charlie’s life felt like an awful, terrible fever dream. She was hoping that she’d wake up from a neverending nightmare eventually, but it was very clear that wasn’t going to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I'd include this fun fact at the end: a few days ago, Lauren Socha (who played Kelly in the show) blocked me on Twitter for quite literally nothing. This doesn't change my opinion of Kelly as a character, but I might sideline some jokes about it into the fanfiction (without breaking the continuity of the story, obviously).


	4. a note

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that wasn't much of a break between chapters, was it? I'm really itching towards hitting 50k on this, so expect a fair few chapters out in the next few weeks. This one is obviously much shorter than Chapter 3, but thanks for sticking around! You'll notice that I deliberately changed a few of Alisha's lines to be less offensive by removing the use of the R slur & not depicting any homophobia. This chapter is quite tame, but, as always, trigger warnings are listed below.
> 
> Trigger Warnings: nudity, male genitalia, swearing

After the group had seemingly got away with… well, killing their probation worker and burying him a very undignified grave under the flyover, Charlie’s week had been a little less turbulent. Drinks with her girlfriend, sex with her girlfriend, shopping and an extremely late night playing games -- after the previous Wednesday, everything had been fun and games for a little while.

But of course, Charlie’s days of paradise compared to the start of her community service had ended when she was legally obliged to show up to the local community centre to do her hours of reformation. The woman who’d showed up to ask them if they’d seen anything unusual regarding Gary and Tony was the group’s new probation worker, Sally, who was naturally a lot less terrifying than Tony had been.

As a group, they were doing yet another extremely demeaning task; on that particular Monday, they were strolling around the estate with bin bags and litter pickers, cleaning up empty stray crisp packets, upturned cans of beer, crushed-up cigarette packets and other miscellaneous rubbish that people had mindlessly discarded around the estate.

“And what? ‘Cos you’re all special and I’m not?” Nathan drawled, yet again complaining about how he apparently didn’t have a superpower. “Yeah, well, I doubt it. You can think what you like, but I have a superpower, and I just need to find out what it is.”

“Maybe you’re just fucking bird-brained,” Alisha replied, putting pressure on the end of her assigned litter picker, clearly not giving a single shit about what they were supposed to be doing as she passed an empty bottle of Heineken.

“Maybe I’ve got a whole Spiderman thing goin’ on,” he continued, swinging his litter picker around and narrowly missing Charlie’s side. “You know, maybe I can climb stuff and do spider shit.”

“Yeah, ‘cos that makes perfect sense,” Curtis scoffed. “Why would  _ you  _ be able to climb stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan said, “but how is it you can turn back time, apparently? And weird kid can turn invisible? And this one can do -- well, I don’t know exactly what you can do, but it’s not like this whole situation is backed up by a wank-load of logic.”

“I have to agree with Curtis, though. You’re not exactly rivalling Tom Holland,” Charlie said. “And no, this situation  _ isn’t  _ backed up by a wank-load of logic, but I really don’t see how  _ you  _ would be able to climb stuff.”

Nathan continued whinging mindlessly about how he didn’t have a power, which was apparently ridiculously unfair and illogical. Eventually, everything he was saying just became exhausting, and Charlie honestly felt like she couldn’t make out a single word of what he was saying. The group wandered the estate for a little bit longer until they headed towards one of the many bin drop-off points on the estate. Alisha’s bag was unsurprisingly empty, but Curtis, on the other hand, had actively been picking up whatever bits of rubbish he’d seen while they’d been walking the estate.

They were about to dispose of their bin bags when Curtis stopped in his tracks and glanced ahead of himself. Charlie turned her head to the left and noticed what Curtis had seen. “What is that?” he said, approaching the point of interest slowly. As they approached, Charlie swiftly turned around after realising exactly what she was seeing. 

There was a naked man on the floor. He was curled up, almost in the fetal position, and was as naked as a newborn baby. His chest was rising and falling, but Charlie didn’t want to spend another second looking at him. “Hey, nude guy?” Alisha said, laughing through her words. “You’re naked.”

The man must’ve turned around, because suddenly Charlie’s fellow young offenders were groaning and laughing at what they were seeing. Charlie decided to turn around, and immediately regretted it. Though she already knew the man was very naked, she wasn’t expecting to see a frankly ridiculously oversized cock. The man looked up at the group, and then looked at himself, almost as if he was shocked to see that he was completely and utterly exposed to a group of young offenders.

“How drunk do you have to be to get yourself into such a predicament?” laughed Charlie, talking to herself through her unappealing laughs. Clutching at her stomach as she wheezed to herself, Charlie noticed that Nathan wasn’t laughing, which was highly uncharacteristic of the curly-haired Irish prick, considering this was  _ exactly  _ the thing he’d usually lose his mind at. Charlie glanced at him, and noticed that Nathan was looking at the naked man with a look of absolute horror in his eyes. 

“YOU!” he yelled.

The incredibly naked man looked up at Nathan specifically, and a look of general dread washed over his face. The man looked as if he was in his mid-40s, maybe; for his age, it was really embarrassing to be caught naked in an alleyway by a group of young offenders who would undoubtedly be laughing about it for weeks. 

The man appeared to suddenly realise his surroundings and exactly who he was looking at, and hurriedly scrambled to his feet, running away from the group as quickly as possible. He slipped on a puddle and crashed to the ground again, which triggered another burst of laughter from everyone except Nathan, who was looking at the man as he ran away, almost as if the man was a ghost from his past.

“Friend of yours?” Charlie asked, only just recovering from how much she’d been laughing. “Was that the local drug dealer?”

“No! That’s my mum’s -- he lives with my mum,” Nathan managed, still looking into the distance as if the man would suddenly reappear fully dressed with an immediate apology.

“Your stepdad has a massive cock!” laughed Alisha through an mocking smirk, clearly still reeling off the comedy of the situation. To be fair, it was pretty funny, but knowing that the naked man was Nathan’s stepdad was particularly unfunny.

“Jesus! He’s not my stepdad, alright?” he scoffed, slapping his forehead.

“Did you see that thing?” Alisha continued. “That was monster big. Your mum will hurt.”

Nathan pressed his index fingers into his ears, sung a woeful rhythm and promptly told Alisha to shut up, which was honestly fair. Though Charlie and Alisha were good friends, she would probably do the same if that was her stepdad instead of Nathan’s. Following Alisha’s comments about the size of the man’s penis, she openly started speculating about why he’d been sleeping naked in one of the estate’s alleyways.

“Maybe he’s a werewolf,” Simon mused, fiddling with his phone subconsciously. Charlie furrowed her eyebrows and looked at him with an ample amount of confusion in her eyes, wondering exactly how he’d managed to get to that conclusion.

“I sincerely doubt that,” she said, crossing her arms.

“It’s what happens in films,” Simon continued, despite the crowd’s very obvious disdain for his suggestion. “You turn into a werewolf, you kill someone, then you wake up somewhere, naked. Like in a zoo.”

“I know last week suggested otherwise, Simon, but we aren’t actually living in a film, you know?” Charlie replied.

“Yeah! And this guy is such a pussy, he needs my mum to open jars for him. If he was a werewolf, he’d be able to open a jar of peanut butter by himself,” Nathan insisted, very clearly dismissing Simon’s idea. It was understandable, really; the pale boy’s suggestion was just ridiculous, and in no way did it make any sense.

“What if the storm messed ‘im up?” Kelly asked. 

“That’s bollocks,” retorted Nathan. “What are the chances?”

Kelly was probably right. There was no chance that they were the only people in Wertham who’d been caught up in the storm. It had encompassed the whole estate, after all. On their way back to the community centre, the group continued musing about the idea of other people having been directly impacted by the storm, though Nathan kept dismissing the idea and kept enforcing the idea that it wasn’t possible.

Once they got back to the community centre, Sally informed them all to change into their normal clothes. Apparently, an event was being hosted at the community centre, and they were going to be helping out as a part of their community service. Charlie groaned at the thought of staying late, but she didn’t have a choice in the matter. 

After they’d all gotten changed into their normal clothes, Sally led the group into the recreation room, where they saw who they were dealing with: old people. It wasn’t as if Charlie hated old people, per se -- she loved her grandparents, and had a special place in her heart for her great-aunt, who was a charming woman with a foul tongue. No, she didn’t hate old people, but she had a very specific disdain for a large group of the elderly. Her grandparents and her great-aunt were progressive despite being in their golden years, but Charlie knew not all of the people in the recreation room would approve of her sloppily-dyed blue hair, her tattoos, her style and her overall approach to life.

“Help out. Talk to them. Make sure they’re having a good time,” Sally instructed. “Move!”

They all set off into the recreation room. Nathan and Kelly headed towards an old man who was sitting on his own and was presumably asleep, while Simon appeared to timidly introduce himself to a woman who was preoccupied with some knitting. Charlie wandered around aimlessly until she found herself standing by a table that was occupied solely by a woman who looked to be in her mid-60s.

“I like your hair,” the woman said, gesturing to a table. “It reminds me of my granddaughter. Come and sit down. We’ll play cards.”

Awkwardly, she agreed to sit down with the woman. “My name’s Charlie,” she said, introducing herself in the best way she could, struggling to maintain eye contact with the woman.

“Is that short for Charlotte?” the woman asked. “Oh, it doesn’t matter anyway. If it is, Charlie certainly suits you more. My name is Martha. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“You too.” The woman wore clothes that weren’t exactly what Charlie would expect older women to wear, but the most interesting factor about the woman was her hair. It was a soft, salmon pink, and it suited her very well. “I like your hair too. It suits you.”

“Oh, thank you,” Martha said, smiling. “What card game would you like to play?”

“I don’t mind. I want to make sure you’re having a good time,” insisted Charlie. 

“Well, one of my favourites is Cheat. Have you heard of it?”

“Yeah, except I don't call it Cheat,” Charlie explained. 

“I think another name for it is Bullshit. That’s what my granddaughter calls it when we play it, at least. Is that what you call it?”

“Yeah, it is. I don’t know if my probation worker is going to be okay with me swearing in the vicinity of the elderly, though,” she explained, tapping her leg against the floor.

“Don’t worry about that, dear! If she tells you off, I’ll tell her that I suggested the game. Besides, it’s more fun to scream bullshit, isn’t it?”

Charlie spent a fair bit of time playing Bullshit with Martha, who explained that her granddaughter was her sole care provider after she had a mild stroke. Martha was a kind woman, and she considered herself an activist, despite having grown up in a strictly conservative household. She had only recently moved into the care home that was visiting the community centre, having realised that her granddaughter wasn’t optimising her own life as much as she should’ve been.

“Do you want any snacks? We have sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, sandwiches -- it’s nothing that fancy, but if you’re hungry, I can sort a plate out for you,” Charlie offered, smiling wistfully at Martha.

“Oh, yes, please! If you don’t mind, could I get some of those little sausage rolls, as well as a selection of the sandwich triangles?” Martha asked. 

“Of course. Do you want anything to drink?” 

“Some water will be fine. Thank you so much, Charlie. You’re too kind.”

As Charlie wandered over to the table featuring the average spread of food, she noticed that Nathan was talking to a young woman who couldn’t have been much older than him. She was, admittedly, beautiful, so it wasn’t a surprise that Nathan was attempting to talk to the woman. He was probably failing. Charlie laughed to herself as the woman grabbed the disposable plate of mini sausage rolls and placed them back on the table, leaving Nathan alone as she wandered back into the kitchen.

“I understand that woman is gorgeous, but I’d pick your jaw up off the floor if I were you, Nathan,” Charlie muttered as she placed some of the mini sausage rolls on Martha’s plate, and placed a few onto her plate, too. “Gawping at a woman isn’t part of your community service.”

“So what is part of my community service, then? Because I’m not gonna sit down with people who are knocking on death’s door and have a civilised chat with them, am I?” he drawled, crossing his arms as he looked at Charlie neatly organising the assortment of food on the plates. “You’re a suck-up. Sitting down with that old pink-haired bint and playing cards with her -- at this point, you’re pretty much one of them.”

“Martha is sweet. I’d much rather spend my time with her,” she replied. “Have you actually done anything useful today, or are you still gawping over that woman?”

Nathan scoffed and shoved his middle finger into her face, which only irritated Charlie even more. She grabbed the plates of food and headed back to Martha, who was fiddling with the cards in her deck. “Is that your boyfriend?” she asked, smiling as she looked at the assortment of food on her paper plate.

Charlie’s jaw dropped. “You couldn’t have it any more wrong, Martha,” she managed, laughing through the pain. She didn’t even want to think about that. “Nathan’s just one of my fellow young offenders, and he’s most certainly  _ not  _ my boyfriend. I have a girlfriend, actually. I couldn’t be any less interested in Nathan. He’s a twat.”

“You have a girlfriend? Well, if that curly-haired lad is a twat, like you say he is, why don’t we talk about your girlfriend instead?” suggested Martha, looking at one of the sandwiches. Charlie smiled, genuinely, and picked up one of her mini sausage rolls before proceeding to talk about Fiona in great detail.

* * *

After the elderly had gone back to the care home for the day, Sally informed the group that they’d be back over the next few days, so the next few days would naturally involve the same activities as the afternoon had involved. Charlie shrugged. Honestly, she was quite happy to be spending some more time with Martha, who was steadily becoming one of her favourite people she’d met in a while.

Everyone gathered in the locker room after the day had ended, chatting as they grabbed their bags, jackets and other assorted items out of their lockers. Curtis opened his locker after returning from the toilet, and suddenly froze when his eyes locked onto something that was hanging on the inside of his door.

“Someone knows,” he said in a cryptic, quiet voice. “They know we killed our probation worker.”

Charlie whizzed around to face Curtis, immediately feeling a sudden increase in her heart rate. Curtis yanked the point of interest -- a piece of paper -- from its place, staring at it with worry in his eyes. 

“Is this a wind-up? Is this you?” Kelly asked, turning to face Nathan, who was putting his jacket on. He scoffed as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“If I was trying to wind you up, I think I’d be a little more creative,” he drawled. “I know what film you saw last summer.”

“This isn’t funny!” Curtis snapped.

“If I wanted to freak you out, I would’ve dug up the body and stuck that in your locker,” Nathan continued, gesturing around wildly like a flailing animal. 

“So if it wasn’t him, who was it?” Simon asked in his typical quiet, squeaky voice.

Charlie groaned and slammed the door of her locker. “Someone obviously suspects us of it, right? They probably think we’re remotely involved in his disappearance, but they probably fully suspect us all of murdering him,” she muttered. “It’s just the question of who.”

“We’ve all done stuff,” Nathan said. “They could be talkin’ about anythin’. It was in your locker.”

“This was meant for all of us. They’re talkin’ about the probation worker!” exclaimed Curtis, suddenly abandoning the formerly hush tones of his voice. 

“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. If they actually  _ knew  _ anythin’, they wouldn’t be dickin’ around, sticking notes in lockers. They would’ve gone to the police and we’d all be banged up in prison, gettin’ gang-raped in the showers,” Nathan explained, with a sudden sense of clarity and intelligence in his voice. “But this? This means they have no evidence. No proof. Nothin’. And anyway, I’m guessin’ it’s about some other totally unrelated shit that  _ you’ve  _ done. So, if we’re all done freakin’ out here over nothin’, there’s somewhere I need to be.”

Charlie’s eyes followed Nathan as he strutted out of the community centre nonchalantly. “Please don’t tell me you actually believe that prick?” Curtis asked, looking at the group desperately.

“Well, whoever did it is just tryna freak us out, right? We just act normal,” Kelly suggested. She was right -- they didn’t want to become the main suspects. As a group, they needed to just keep their heads low and do exactly that; act normal.

“As much as I hate to agree with Nathan, he’s right,” Charlie said as Curtis approached her. “I don’t know if it’s about something you did, but one simple bit of printed A4 isn’t enough evidence. They don’t have anything on us, and they know it. They’re just throwing suspicion at us. There’s no concrete proof, and there won’t be if we all play our cards right.”

“You can’t really believe him,” Curtis continued.

“Right now, we have no other choice. That note is a fucking wake-up call. Even though they don’t have any real evidence, over the next few days, we need to be extremely careful. Every movement, every step -- we can’t overstep anywhere, okay?” Charlie enforced, finalising her statement as she picked her bag up from the ground and walked out of the community centre.


End file.
